\t LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. t\ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 4 



act 



<2ru~4H*&l< t 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 

I volume. i6mo. $ i.oo. 



A PEESENT HEAVEN- 
addressed TO A FRIEND. 

I volume. i6mo. Si.oo. 



In Press. 

POEMS, 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers, 



Two Friends 



BY 



THE AUTHOR OF "THE PATIENCE OF HOPE* 
AND "A PRESENT HEAVEN" 




£rr 



T TENEO ET TENEOR 



BOSTON 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS 

1863 



*> Cv 



^ *\^ 



Tbb Library 
of Congress 

WASHINGTON 



author's edition. 



SECOND EDITION. 



University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



DEDICATED 

TO 

THOMAS CONSTABLE 

BY HIS ATTACHED FRIEND 

THE AUTHOR. 



October -jth, 1862. 



<$«£> 



" Meanwhile the gold King was asking the man, ' How 
many secrets knowest thou?' * Three,' replied the man. 

* Which is the most important ? ' said the silver King. 

* The open one? replied the other. ' Wilt thou open it to 
us also ? ' said the brass King. ' When I know the fourth ! ' 
replied the man." 

"Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created 
us ? And did not he make one ? " — Malachi ii. 10, 1 5. 




Two Friends. 




WAS born beneath quiet hills, among 
green pastures, beside still waters. 
My first companion was a little 
stream, my earliest counsellor an ancient book. 
Along the edge of the stream ran a footpath, 
so narrow, so rarely trodden, that the ferns 
and wild-flowers would sometimes overgrow 
and even hide it; and then the brook itself 
became my guide: one that I followed con- 
fidingly, because I knew and loved it under 
every change. It would sometimes so contract 
the channel of its hurrying waters as to leave 
a broad pebbly shingle, warm in the blaze of 
noonday, and friendly to my childish feet. 
The trees which fringed it on either side would 
now interlace their boughs so closely that I 



2 TWO FRIENDS. 

could scarcely push my way between them, 
and they would now recede, opening out some 
little bay of verdure, some green savanna 
which had been cleared of its thick nut-bushes 
and clinging brambles, and from whence, through 
the trees that still held it in their arms, one 
might gain a sunny reach of corn-field, a 
glimpse of some distant village, and see, be- 
yond all, a low range of hills that seemed to 
bound the prospect, and yet to hide, to promise 
nothing. I dwelt long beside the little stream ; 
so long, that the seasons above me changed 
greatly, the dark thunder-cloud broke above 
me, the drenching shower fell, the frost set in 
that is too intense to be searching, when Na- 
ture's heart dies within her, and makes no sign. 
By the banks of that little brook, Trouble over- 
took me. Pain — at whose breath the flowers 
paled, the green leaves shrunk up, and fell upon 
the ground fire-smitten — led me long time by 
the hand. Even Anguish met me; but never 
Discord. My way might be steep and unallur- 
ing ; but it was always plain, " straight as a line 
could make it," and tending to a foreseen, though 



TWO FRIENDS. 3 

distant end. My heart was troubled, but unre- 
sisting ; so methought He bringeth them to the 
haven where they would be. The birds sang to 
me at morn and even ; at morn and even I read 
within my book. How was it that the brook 
suddenly became wider; that it swelled into a 
mighty river; that the trees upon its banks 
grew thick and tangled, and spread into broad, 
untracked woods ; while far behind, in place of 
the low hills, that were but the plain raised to a 
higher level, rose mountains with cloven sum- 
mits, down which the clouds stole. They beck- 
oned me to them with a lure, a promise : it was 
not, I knew, for nothing that they lifted them- 
selves thus proudly into heaven ; that they sank 
their firm foundations so deep within the earth, 
placing themselves among the things that cannot 
be shaken. I had heard, of old, this saying, 
" The mountains shall bring peace." O that I 
could reach unto them ! that I might gaze from 
their glorious peaks ! that I might delve within 
their unsunned mines ! and I struck within the 
forest by many paths, but without finding that 
which led to the mountains. 



4 TWO FRIENDS. 

One day, after a long breathing pause, I again 
pressed onward. Suddenly parting the boughs, 
I came upon the ruins of an ancient temple ; its 
white shafts rose against the dark forest back- 
ground, and still, in their broken outline, pre- 
served the trace of the building's original plan, 
as a lovely, once-heard tune will return upon 
the ear in fragments, and hint out its half-for- 
gotten melody. Bright trailing weeds crept up 
these broken pillars. Here and there a statue 
still stood erect, — still breathed with a divine 
impassive life ; and some, fallen and mutilated, 
lay among the warm grass ; but these, too, 
lived; these too, methought, triumphed, for 
their smile still made silence eloquent. Who 
were these forms? the sons of strength and 
beauty, of light and freedom, — the children of 
some golden, untrammelled age, unfettered, god- 
like ? If sleeping they could thus stir, thus en- 
chain the soul, what had they been in their 
waking ? What was this pride upon their lips, 
this calm, this sweetness of their brows ? What 
had my life been, how poor, how restricted, that 
even the dream of such forms had never visited 



TWO FRIENDS. 5 

it; that the shadow of their wings had never 
fallen across my sleep, the bright curve of their 
half-parted lips never greeted my waking ? A 
cold gnawing fell upon my heart ; a scorn, that 
was almost hate of things familiar and accus- 
tomed, and of the life that had been passed 
among them. Had this indeed been life? 

While I asked myself this question, music 
awoke around me. I listened: it was high 
noon : the birds were silent in the forest ; the 
shattered columns, the fair-gleaming statues, 
stood up clear against the broad depth of the 
summer heaven. Not a breeze rustled, not a 
leaf shook. Yet around, above, within me, that 
music gathered ; it grew stronger in the silence ; 
it bore me up as on mighty wings ; it carried 
me I knew not whither ; in a moment of time 
it had taught me the secret of a hundred hearts, 
— tears and raptures, despairs and exultations, 
too mighty for one bounded spirit. It gathered 
all things within it, as a mother might draw her 
erring, repentant children unto her bosom; 
making room for deep confessions, for recon- 
ciliations that were still more ample. Here, 



6 TWO FRIENDS. 

too, were recognitions of wide relationships, 
affinities disowned and slighted, that only could 
meet and kiss each other for a moment while 
the pitying music sobbed above them. And 
still the strain awoke and died ; still it returned 
upon itself, as friends, who, meeting after long 
parting, must again part, come back again with 
some word that* can never be fully spoken. It 
went forth, it returned, then with a firm, soft 
clasp, as of a little child's hand, it clasped the 
spirit closely ; it held Earth compressed in a lit- 
tle space ; it brought down Heaven to a point 
of ecstasy. 

I fled from it; I struggled to regain the 
river ; I forced my way back through the thick 
odor-breathing trees, through the wreaths, the 
ropes of flowers that hung from them, and 
sought to stay me in their twining arms. Were 
these, too, conspirators, the purple and scarlet 
blossoms, that breathed out their heavy hearts, 
full of anguish and of love, so that I seemed, as 
I tore my way through them, to drink in their 
fiery and fragrant souls. — Are there, I asked, 
martyrs among the flowers ? spirits burning, yet 



TWO FRIENDS. 7 

unconsumed, that light up their own lives ! 
The strife, the revel of the music, had passed 
within them ; they glowed, they paled with its 
triumph and its decline. Like moons, they 
filled themselves with light at its fountain ; 
their hues, their odors, were in secret, deep 
alliance with its choral mystery. Here, too, 
were subtle interfusions ; sudden, yet long-an- 
ticipated climaxes of splendor ; discords that 
prophesied the harmony they seemed to contra- 
dict; laws broken, to be fulfilled in a deeper 
spirit. — At length I regained the river, but not 
at the point where I had left it ; at a little dis- 
tance it lay before me like a glittering bow, 
flung down amid the woods that swept back 
from it in broad, smooth masses. A little lower 
down, I saw that the woods were broken by 
huge masses of rock, now reddening in the 
westering sun, and I heard a hoarse murmur, 
as of water, that chafed within a narrowed 
channel ; but at the spot where I now stood, 
all was peace and loveliness., The river looked 
like a lake, so broad was it, so serene, so un- 
ruffled ; it spread its calm bosom to the evening 



8 TWO FRIENDS, 

sky; the clouds saw themselves within it like 
islets of floating flame. It curved gently to my 
feet, as if it would woo me also to linger. 
Peace, peace, it whispered; wilt thou not also 
rest? the evening bringeth all things home. 

But even as it were half consciously I went 
still onward, and drew gradually more near the 
rocks. As I approached still nearer, a strong 
slanting beam from the red sunset fell across 
them for a moment, and I saw that they were 
scored all over with Runic characters. These, 
I thought, contain the history of some vanished 
people, — some race passed by, like a wave or a 
cloud, for ever ; but, lo ! as I set my heart to 
interpret these mystic traceries, I found that 
they were but a long, unbroken family tradi- 
tion, the story of the Many and the One, the 
life of Man. These rocks drew me to them 
with an iron magnetism; I lived, I slept be- 
neath them ; morn and even I pored upon their 
records till all their subtle symbolism grew fa- 
miliar to me, as to a child the pictures upon the 
walls of his nursery. I stood beside the cradles 
of giant nations ; I listened to the songs that 



TWO FRIENDS. 9 

were sung, the legends that were told to races 
in their mighty youth. They changed often, 
yet they were still sweet, still intelligible ; for 
they were the same songs sung by the same era* 
die, the same stories told beside the same hearth. 
Through them all ran one device, as of two 
arrows so closely bound together that they 
seemed one. The arrow was borne onwards 
by the song, the song sharpened by the arrow ; 
each pointed to an age far back in dim perspec- 
tive, when gods walked on earth, and earth was 
worthy of their footprints ; each pointed, though 
darkly, to a return of this period ; a return only 
to be achieved through voluntary, self-chosen 
pain, and the suffering of that which is divine. 
Then these songs of sadness and of glory 
ceased, or came across the ear fitfully, as music 
might come across a stormy and bitter wave. I 
saw generations of men crowd and press upon 
each other ; as the worm toils beneath the 
Southern Ocean, so they toiled in countless 
myriads from birth even unto death, building 
up their lives within the fabric of some giant 
despotism. Behold, what manner of stones, and 
1* 



10 TWO FRIENDS. 

what buildings are these, and within them a 
mummy or an ape in effigy ! Then, as a mighty 
inundation breaks down the thick-woven jungle, 
snaps its tall reeds, lays bare the haunts of the 
wild forest-dwellers, and hurries down to the 
sea with the lion and the lamb, the snake and 
the antelope, creatures deadly and innocent, 
floating on its swift current, hurled to one com- 
mon ruin, so came the fresh tide of men : by 
land and by sea they came ; swift, compact, 
irresistible, bearing down all before them. I 
heard their wild chants, their shouts of pride 
and triumph : 

" We have sung them the Mass of Lances, 
It lasted from morning till sunset. 

The might of the tempest is the strength of the rower, 
It does but carry us where we wish to go." 

Yet slowly, from amidst these wrecks, rose up 
the old foundations, the strongholds of greed 
and cruelty ; their stones were welded together 
firmly as at the first, and cemented as at the 
first with the sweat of man's brow, the life- 
blood of his heart. I saw the people strong 
and patient ; an ass that stooped down between 



TWO FRIENDS. 11 

two burdens, accustomed to the yoke from 
youth, yet sometimes striking out fiercely with 
its iron-shod hoofs. I saw the human heart 
made the football of tyrants, the plaything of 
cruel children, w T ho knew not the excellence of 
that with which they sported. I saw it de- 
frauded both of its highest and its humblest 
hopes ; cheated alike out of its birthright and 
its pottage ; sold in the market-place and in the 
temple ; its dearest interests set upon a cast of 
dice, or bartered for the cold smile of a wanton. 
Yea, more than this, I saw a Terror that had 
crept w T ithin the souls of men. A divine voice 
had once spoken : " Fear ye not them which kill 
the body, and after that have no more that they 
can do." Shall man be free within his own 
spirit; free to love and pray, to call upon God 
in his own language ? Here also shall man be a 
slave ; when the hunters are upon him, let him 
not think to cross this boundary: it exists no 
longer. Two dark tyrannies, stretching till they 
meet, have taken in man's whole being. If he 
would mount up into heaven, it is there ; if he 
would lie down in the grave, it is there also: 



12 TWO FRIENDS. 

chains, darkness, the gripe of the unrelenting 
bloodhound. I saw a foreground of desolation, 
a background of abject terror, lit up with ghastly 
fires. I saw Humanity stand within the world's 
judgment-hall, gagged, insulted, with its hands 
bound behind it, the scoff of Soldier and of 
Priest, yet at that moment I heard the voice of 
one that spake, low but distinct, from amid the 
torture, "Uppure si muove" and I saw that the 
soul grew. Bound even with a band of brass 
and iron,* it lay yet in the tender grass of the 
field, it was yet wet with the dew of heaven. 
From time to time some heart, within which the 
fire had long smouldered, would break and go 
out, it seemed in ashes and darkness, yet those 
fiery sparks had made the darkness visible ; no 
longer was it such as could be felt. Then light 
arose, but with it came confusion ; the heart 
was no longer trampled on, but it erred, it was 
the robber of its own wealth. 

Then I remembered the saying of the wise 
man, " That which is wanting cannot be num- 
bered." I thought I will read no longer ; these 

* Daniel iv. 23. 



TWO FRIENDS. 13 

records are too sorrowful ; there is surely a less 
perplexing lore. I will seek out the broad, lov- 
ing secret of the universe ; I will decipher its 
clear story, not blurred and defeatured like this 
one, but as it lies before me in the original hand- 
writing of God. But in this attempt also was 
anguish. When I flung myself on Nature's 
broad bosom for comfort, its coldness stung me 
like a thorn ; there was no w^arm, tender heart 
within it to respond to my own that beat so 
wildly; its pulsation was that of a vast ma- 
chinery, life and death that sprung out of each 
other, all things bound in order, in fatality; a 
Universe that ground upon its way, sowing the 
Expanse with worlds as its fiery sparks flew off. 
Here I saw splendor and desolation, as of a 
magnificent household, lavish in its expenditure, 
because its resources are illimitable. What 
meant these monkeys that grinned and chat- 
tered ; these snakes with their cold crowns and 
glittering eyes ; the rustle of the fierce and 
lovely leopard ? Also the flowers put on a look 
of mockery; their aspects revealed strange af- 
finities, awoke suggestions of doubtful import. 



14 TWO FRIENDS, 

Were these house-children also wicked and 
guileful? Was there treachery in this broad, 
universal calm of Nature, in this impassive smile 
that, sphinx-like, told nothing and hid so much ? 
As I pursued her she still fled before me, still 
flung me from time to time, half derisively, 
some intricate toy, a golden apple that did but 
stay me from the final goal. Then, as if in 
sleep or death, she would stretch herself before 
me in a feigned immobility, wrapped in a thou- 
sand folds ; and when I pierced beneath one, 
beneath a hundred, there was still another 
and another. Were these swaddling-clothes 
or grave-bands? I knew not. Here I found 
design, I knew not to what end ; power ; here 
also bondage more cruel, I thought, than that 
of men over their fellows, for the heart that has 
fallen under it has no escape; it is coextensive 
with the universe itself. I sat down, a stone 
among the stones ; let the seasons roll, I would 
grow gray like them, and motionless. My eye 
wandered listlessly over the gorgeous landscape, 
the little islets of white sculptured lilies, the 
purple woods, the far-distant mountains. Here 



TWO FRIENDS. 15 

was a magnificent panorama of death, a shining 
veil drawn over a face that writhed in anguish. 

Then, upon a rock above me, my eye lit upon 
a familiar sign, a cross, and beneath it these 
letters, — 

"Yix fugere a 2Seo, fujge aft HBeum," 

and while I gazed, a pale majestic face looked 
upon me rebukingly ; a form passed by, with 
kingly but uneven step, as of one wounded 
even to death. He spoke not, but I read with- 
in his eye this saying, "Faithful are the wounds 
of a friend" Then I sighed within my spirit 
so deeply that an icy band burst; resistance, 
rebellion, were gone. The yoke to which God 
himself had stooped could not be too grievous 
to be borne. I saw this solemn Trinity, Nature 
and Man and God, pierced with the self-same 
wound. I knew that they would suffer, I knew 
that they would be restored together. Where 
was now the cold sequence, the crushing, un- 
pitying regularity? Let the worlds roll to- 
gether, let the heavens and the earth be 
changed, Jesus, thou, too, art part of God's 



16 TWO FRIENDS. 

mighty plan ! I sat down beneath this rock, 
not elate, but satisfied; its broad shadow fell 
over me ; from beneath it I gazed upon the 
dark woods, the fair river. Once again I 
looked up to that Sign of love and triumph; 
then I observed that it was green ; some soft 
bright lichen had sown itself within the deep- 
cut symbol, and a prophetic word fell upon my 
spirit : " The dry tree shall flourish " ; the cross 
also shall become green, shall be vivified with 
the heart it vivifies. 

I arose and went forward, so sunk in thought 
that I did not see that as I went on the river 
shrunk gradually till it was scarcely broader 
than it had been in olden days ; it grew nar- 
rower and narrower ; rocks shut it in on either 
side, sometimes dipping clear into the water so 
as to leave no foot-way, sometimes sending out 
a wide stony strand which seemed to press the 
contracted current out of life ; vexed and tor- 
tured, it revenged itself by wearing caverns 
beneath the stone where it whirled in still black 
pools unseen for ever. The trees, the flowers, 
were left far behind ; the river had grown som- 



TWO FRIENDS. 17 

bre and taciturn. O, how I missed its early 
cheerfulness, the nut and alder bushes that 
overhung its banks ; the scarlet berry of the 
mountain-ash in autumn, the white stain of the 
wild cherry-tree in spring ; the leap of the trout, 
the glimmer of the dragon-fly, the brown wet 
shine of the smooth stones beneath the stream. 
I thought of the unequal stepping-stones, invit- 
ing to a perilous joy ; the frequent bridge, 
rustic and tremulous, upon which it was so 
sweet to linger, to cross and recross without 
any stringent motive. Then the little brook had 
been companionable, garrulous ; it chode, it 
murmured incessantly, yet said nothing ; it did 
not need to speak articulately, for it was in 
accordance with all that surrounded it. What 
need for speech or language where a Voice was 
ever heard ? 

Then, too, I had had many companions, play- 
mates, and work-fellow T s, whose looks, w^hose 
voices had been dearer to me than aught by the 
brook or in the forest. Sometimes we had read 
together in the book ; sometimes we had knelt 
and prayed together in the clear evening light. 



18 TWO FRIENDS. 

We loved each other ; we shared together many 
innocent secrets, many joys and tears, many 
thoughts that we passed, as in a torch-race, 
from hand to hand ; the light that dawned upon 
one heart would grow to-day in another. I 
thought it would be thus for ever. Had these 
deserted me, or had I left them, ever following 
the course of this mysterious river? Their 
voices sounded clear and cold, like distant bells, 
tender only through some long-past association. 
Even those of .my beloved Dead were nearer; 
but these, too, had grown thin as the music of 
the wind-swept pine-tree. I knew that I was 
now alone. I could not reunite these ties; I 
could not bring back the Past, which had gone 
for ever. It was not night within my soul, for 
neither moon nor stars appeared; no soft lure 
held me back ; no bright, unsteadfast hope 
urged me forward. Neither found I the black- 
ness of darkness within my spirit, but a strange 
freedom, joined with a loneliness that was 
almost fearful. Around, within me was calm, 
and silence that spread and stretched like the 
desert, ever widening, to widen ever ; a grave 



TWO FRIENDS. 19 

that was shut in by no bars. " Free," I said, 
"among the dead." Like one continually as- 
cending, I had left the pale saxifrage, the last 
flower that fringes the verge of ice, behind me. 
The air grew keen and difficult. Every step 
revealed some fresh undreamt-of glory, some 
rose-flushed summit, some meeting-ground of 
earth and heaven ; but it was chill ; I drew my 
breath with pain ; my heart seemed to have 
ceased beating, but when I laid my hand upon 
it, I found that it burned with self-fed, self- 
centred fire. 

Then, suddenly, there fell upon my soul a 
sense of greatness, telling me to be no more 
sorrowful, for that I was not really alone, but 
part of a Whole in which I should find all 
things, — those that I had left behind, those 
that I had failed to reach to, yea, my own life 
also. If it be indeed so, I thought, then I re- 
fuse not to die ; to lose that which is in part, in 
the coming in of that which is perfect. But 
how may my spirit attain unto this baptism? 
Oftentimes I seemed near some mighty secret, 
to lie on the very threshold of Truth ; but to be 



20 TWO FRIENDS. 

chained there: a spell was upon that threshold 
that never allowed me to overpass it. On the 
flower, the shell, the wing of the butterfly, 
were traces of a writing whose counterpart was 
in my own soul ; as when a page has been torn 
down the midst, I found I had only to join these 
characters to make their meaning plain. The 
winds, the leaves, my own voice and that of the 
birds, were harmony ; I strove to master it ; to 
pierce to its deep fundamental structure. Then 
the rocks began to give forth music at sunrise 
and sunset ; not like that alluring, bewildering 
music of the forest and ruined temple, but sol- 
emn and chastened. That sweetness dissolved 
the spirit; this built it up within its mighty 
chord. Each scattered drop, each bright spark 
of melody that had fallen here and there, mak- 
ing some stray blade or blossom lovely, shone 
there, gathered up into a lofty arch of sound 
that might grow, I thought, to one of Triumph, 
spanning earth and heaven. It was ever pure, 
ever prophetic ; yet now, as I listened, it seemed 
to me that there were but two who spake within 
it, exchanging, as in some old, simple song, the 



TWO FRIENDS. 21 

I and Thou of an unalterable constancy ; then 
it would grow to the voice of a great multitude, 
to the sound of many waters. I heard harpers 
harping on their harps, compassing me about 
with songs of deliverance ; and yet the music 
did not change. 

For hours I would lie listening to the birds ; 
for hours I would toil among the flowers and 
fossils I had collected ; once more I read at 
morn and even in my book. Then as I lay at 
midday, a light above the brightness of the 
noon would sometimes be cast around me, and 
a well-known Form would pass me, as one in 
haste. His step was still regal ; his garments 
red, from the battle or the vintage, I knew not 
which ; but his eye was calm as that of one who 
follows out some vast, long-deliberated plan. 
He did not stay to speak with me, but in pass- 
ing me his step was slower, and once he turned 
and looked upon me for a moment. I under- 
stood that silent appeal, yet I did not respond 
to it, did not follow where it led. I had ex- 
perienced, endured so much ; weariness of all 
things, even of good, had overtaken me; a 



22 TWO FRIENDS. 

spring in my life that kept all moving had run 
low, had stopped altogether. Then understood 
I why a certain Father had said, " I have writ- 
ten unto you, young men, because ye are strong." 
Even now, far above the valley, I heard the 
clear songs of the vintagers, the shouts of those 
who carried home the corn ; the fields stood 
white, all things told me that the Harvest of 
the earth had come, and its Lord would imme- 
diately thrust in the sickle. How gladly would 
I once have joined these bands, have shared in 
their labors, their rewards ! I thought of the 
plans I had formed with my old play-fellows, 
how we would clear jungles, would found villa- 
ges ; now I had ceased to plan, perhaps because 
I had ceased to hope. How, too, could I leave 
this world so lately found, so hardly won ; too 
late I loved thee, thou fair, ever-changing realm 
of Nature ! This high rock-girdled paradise of 
thought and beauty, this citadel of refuge, this 
green enclosure, — is it not a little one? passed 
by by the busy foot, overlooked by the curious 
eye, fair only to the heart that loves it, yet hard 
to leave. I know thee, Jesus, that thou art an 



TWO FRIENDS. 23 

hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, 
gathering where thou hast not strawed. I 
remembered one who had gone away sorrowful 
because he had a small possession, and I felt that 
the full hand has the loosest grasp. The with- 
ered tendrils cling closer than the green ; when 
the rose was yet heavy with dew, and fragrance, 
it had not been so hard to pluck it off! 

And that benignant form still passed upon his 
way, still looked upon me in sadness, but with- 
out austerity. Jesus, thou knowest the heart, 
but thou art greater than our heart, and know- 
est all things ! The Poor committeth himself 
unto Thee. 

One day I had turned aside to track the 
course of a little brawling stream that fell into 
the river ; its waters were of a clear golden 
brown, like that of the dying fern ; it had come 
across many a lonely moor from the mountains, 
and might, I thought, take me with it to its 
birthplace. First, however, it led me into a 
still gray valley, strewn with pieces of rock, 
that looked at a little distance like a flock of 
sheep feeding, and added to the peaceful charm 



24 TWO FPdENDS. 

of the scene. All breathed security. I wan- 
dered to and fro without much thought; I 
threw myself upon the warm grass, resting my 
head upon one of the gray stones. It was Au- 
tumn, one of those days that are sweeter, kinder 
than the Spring. The wind blew strong, yet 
softly; it wakened I know not what echoes 
among the rocks, the mountains, yet within the 
valley all was still ; the birches that hung from 
its rocky sides scarcely shook ; only from time 
to time a thrill as of pleasure passed through 
them. Often have I listened to the wind with 
rapture, but never did it bear to me so full, so 
rich a message, one of unspeakable tranquillity, 
and hope so calm, that I knew not whether this 
voice came to me out of the past or out of the 
future ; all that was sweet, was desired in, either, 
seemed to mingle in it. Can ecstasy, I thought, 
wear such sober colors? A Hand seemed to 
guide that rushing wind ; it fell upon my cheek, 
my forehead, like a blessing warm from some 
heart of more than human tenderness. Then 
my own heart stirred and fluttered beneath that 
brooding warmth, and from its very depths two 



TWO FRIENDS. 25 

words went up, " Our Father," and I knew 
that I had found the long-sought key, the pure, 
primeval language. This then was what I 
sought, what I needed, a Father who was a 
Spirit, the Father of Spirits and of men. Had 
he indeed come forth to meet me V Then I knew 
that I was not far from home. 

" I shall rest," I said, " beneath His wings, 
and I shall be safe among His feathers." A 
calm of feeling fell upon me, such as is wont to 
precede the great crises of life, when the soul, 
feeling itself upon the very threshold of a new 
existence, is held back there by the old one, 
which, before it is left behind forever, has 
many things to say, and concentrates its spirit 
within a few solemn moments : — 

" Last night I saw the new moon, 
With the old moon in her arms." 

There are some days, even moments, in our 
lives, upon which the burden of the whole seems 
laid, which, as in a parable, condense within 
them the mystery, the contradiction of our ex- 
istence, and perhaps hint at its solution. After 

such times, life grows clearer before and after. 
2 



26 TWO FRIENDS. 

These seasons are set apart from the rest by a 
solemn consecration. We feel that we are 
anointed " above our fellows " ; it may be for 
the joy of the bridal, for the wrestler's strug- 
gle, or against the day of our burial^ we know 
not which. 

The mountain stream had become a friend to 
me ; its voice reminded me of that of my earli- 
est companion, the brook, in the days when we 
had been young together. The noon drew to 
its decline, filling the glen with a calm golden 
light, that, meeting with its own lustre on the 
fading leaves, kindled them into a sudden radi- 
ance. I followed the stream slowly, when, as it 
were, in a moment, it ended, and the valley 
with it. It was as if the craggy, woody ledge 
of a mountain had slipt forward, and brought 
the scene to a close so abruptly that one might 
think there was nothing beyond, and that the 
world itself ended here. Yet the stream gave 
this thought a joyous contradiction as it fell 
from height to height, flashing lightly between 
the bushes that half hid it, and gathering itself 
at the foot of the rock into a deep unsunned 



TWO FRIENDS. 27 

pool. Looking closer, too, I saw a steep path, 
by which an agile climber might wend his way 
up the rock without much difficulty; but I at 
that moment felt in no mood for adventure. I 
stood long, half listening to the falling water, 
half gazing at the singular, enchanting scene ; 
when far above me I heard a clear, low whistle, 
and, looking up, saw the brown, handsome face 
of one who bent over the crag, and nodded to 
me, as if in recognition. 

I smiled in return, for the loneliness drew us 
together like a band. 

He called to me, " Shall I show you the up- 
ward path ? " I shook my head ; so, half leaping 
from point to point, half swinging himself from 
bough to bough, using both feet and hands 
freely, he let himself down the rock, and soon 
reached the place where I was standing. Then 
I saw that his dress was plain, even to homeli- 
ness, yet his air was free and noble ; he set his 
foot firmly on the ground, as one who found his 
place wherever he happened to stand. In all 
his movements there was a decision, a rapidity, 
that made, as it were, a wind that carried him 



28 TWO FRIENDS. 

forward ; a light, pleasant rustling, a joyous 
excitement, as of the chase or the voyage, 
seemed to follow where he went. But did I 
see this at first ! did I see anything in thee at 
first and at last but thy kindness, Philip ! From 
the first unto the last thou wert unto me a 
friend ; one that showed himself friendly. 

He saw that I looked wearied, and offered 
me a cordial from a flask that he carried with 
him. As he poured it out, the wind blew aside 
his vest, and I saw that he carried within his 
bosom the book that had so long been my com- 
panion. We sat together on the trunk of a 
fallen tree ; we talked till the shadows began to 
gather round us thickly. The dying light, the 
faint shiver of the leaves above us, the mystery, 
the solitude that enclosed us, — all seemed to 
exalt, to deepen our converse, to shorten our 
w r ay into each other's hearts, by removing all 
that ofttimes drops like a veil between soul and 
soul, changing us from our truer, better selves 
in an evil transfiguration. But had I met thee, 
Philip, in the thick of this world's conventions, 
even there, even at first meeting, we had made 



TWO FRIENDS. 29 

for ourselves a solitude, like this one, populous 
with thought. 

I asked him many questions about the moun- 
tains, about the broad plains of toil and conflict 
that spread below them, on which I found he 
was a dweller. Then, in return, he inquired 
eagerly into the secrets of the broad river, the 
rocks, the forest. I found they were not un- 
known ground to him, though their spells had 
never laid so strong a grasp on his spirit as on 
mine. " For I," he said, smiling, " came not in 
by the Gate which is called Beautiful." He 
examined my store of specimens with eager 
curiosity. My own spirit caught the flame, 
each withered flower seemed to bloom, each 
pebble to flash like an opal, as I spread them 
forth before him. They had never before 
seemed so valuable to me, yet I exclaimed, with 
a hasty impulse, " Take any of them, all ; you 
will use, enjoy them ; I perhaps have done 
neither." 

"Nay," he returned, laughing, "the best 
things are those which are shared, not given. 
I will take nothing from you ; for a gift de- 



30 TWO FRIENDS, 

mands a gift in return, and what have I to give 
you in exchange ? Nothing." 

"Nothing," I answered him, "except that 
which is the fibre and soul of all things, — 
Hope." 

" Well, then," he said, looking at me with 
his clear, honest eyes, " I will make a good 
bargain, and traffic with that against your 
wisdom." 

I laughed in my turn, and said, " Agreed, 
if you will exchange that word for my expe- 
rience." 

4 *^oto, experience toorfcetj Jope." 




<T was in Autumn that I first met 
jj: Philip, and with Autumn, and all 
that belongs to it, he is forever 
associated to my mind; with walks through 
the rustling corn-fields, across the breezy, 
sunny hills ; with rambles in the woods, the 
faint decaying odor of the fallen leaves, and 
the sound of our footsteps among them; with 
ripe nuts slipping from their husks; with the 
berry, the fir-apple, the acorn ; with all that 
makes up Autumn's sober, exhilarating charm. 
And yet, more than with all of this, I connect 
him with that sense of rest and fulfilment, " the 
joy of harvest," which only Autumn brings. 
How bright, how confident was Philip ! Yet 
his was a sober, I had almost said a calculated 
joy ; it held by a firm root, being not so much 



32 TWO FRIENDS. 

a part of his nature as belonging to the whole 
of it. As we now stood together, I saw that I 
was not so much older than he as I had at first 
imagined ; no, nor yet so much poorer ; but his 
spoils had been won in the free sunlight, mine 
gathered from the darksome cave. What mat- 
ter that they had been won hardly, even 
snatched from dark and slippery places, where 
my footing had wellnigh failed? what matter 
that they had now ceased to charm me ? that I 
delight no longer in the dark glow of the car- 
buncle, in the opal's imprisoned fire ? for thou, 
Philip, didst love and prize them, and they may 
serve thee for use and beauty when thy friend 
is here no longer. 

Philip, too, had been, like me, a merchant- 
man seeking goodly pearls. Beauty, knowl- 
edge, power, had each cast its deep spell over 
his spirit ; his toils had been as severe as mine, 
yet mixed with far less of suffering, and this 
because he had ever been at home in the world. 
Growing as the tree, as the flower grows, from 
within, yet drinking freely, as they do, of air 
and dew and sunshine, for him, as regards each 



TWO FRIENDS. 33 

common, kindly outward influence, had that 
word been spoken, " Unto you are they given 
for foody My life had been more restrained, 
less natural ; it would sometimes seem to me 
that I formed no essential part of the things 
that surrounded me, that I even lived by effort 
and volition. Yet this secret sense of unfamil- 
iarity sat heavily on my spirit ; I had been like- 
a stranger with a friendly heart, who, perplexed 
with the bustle of the family, smiles and tries to 
look as if he understands what it all means. 
Even when I had been most bewildered by the 
rush and clatter of the vast machinery of life, 
with its, to me, unintelligible wheels and 
springs, I had the most striven to knit myself 
up within the complicated web it wrought. I 
had sought to find for myself affinities which 
even in courting I had in some degree dreaded, 
for it was need rather than affection that drew 
me to them, and I knew not how dangerously 
powerful such alliances might prove; they re- 
turned my grasp closely, but was their pressure 
indeed kindly ? Often I felt the steel gauntlet 
rather than the living hand. Might they not 
2* o 



34 TWO FZIEXDS. 

absorb the life they seemed to nourish? Yet 
while I had now wound myself round a shelter- 
ing elm, while I had now been driven to em- 
brace the rock for a shelter, while I had been 
ever solicitous of some exterior help, some but- 
tress that might support the fabric it seemed but 
to adorn, Philip's mind resting on a sure foun- 
dation, and tending to a fixed aim, had lifted up 
his whole life into the sunshine, self-poised, like 
the dome of Brunelleschi. His whole spiritual 
being was like a strongly-governed country, 
where all things fall, as it were, inevitably un- 
der a few fixed all-inclusive laws ; the problems 
of life and thought perplexed, but did not over- 
whelm him : the enchanted forest of fancv was 
safe ground to one who held within his bosom 
the golden knife, ever ready to cut its clear, 
swift way, when the path became too en- 
tangled, the knot too hard. 

Yet Philip was no special pleader even for 
Truth itself; he loved her for her own sake, 
too well to ask her "whence she came, or 
whither she was going " ; he held her, I often 
thought, in a bold, loving clasp, as the maiden 



TWO FRIENDS. 35 

is held in the ancient legend : let her turn 
within his arms to sword or flame, let her 
change there into some fearful and monstrous 
shape, still would that fervent, unrelaxing grasp 
compel her to reveal herself in her true like- 
ness ; still within those very arms would she 
bless him. He knew that she would ofttimes 
make herself strange to him, and lead him 
through crooked paths ; and where she led, he 
followed. He avoided no discussion ; he shrank 
from no conclusion ; yet it was interesting 
through all to watch his quiet, assured counte- 
nance, bright, I sometimes thought, with a sort 
of patient, anticipated triumph, like that of one 
to whom the end has been made surely known, 
though he has been left to find for himself the 
way. Duty, faith, accountability — all that the 
clear consciousness of spiritual freedom gives — 
were so strong in him as to determine the grav- 
itation of his intellect, as well as that of his 
soul. To steadfast, implicit reliance on God, 
to simple, practical obedience to His law, he 
must come back after however strong and dar- 
ing a flight. Therefore he, of all whom I have 



36 TWO FRIENDS. 

known, was best able to realize the evangelic 
privilege of serving the Lord without fear. Let 
him wander where he would, he could not get 
into a Far Country; the world was unto him 
the Father's house, and he the Son w r ho was 
ever with him. His spirit was that of one to 
whom the day of life, from dawn to dusk, was 
emphatically the Day after which the Night 
cometh, wherein no man can work; and yet 
there was in him I know not what sweetness 
and candor of nature, that saved him from the 
narrowness that so often marks the compact, 
established mind. He was no slave of the 
Hours, to he upon the grass and w r atch their 
flight, as it is marked by sun-gleam and shadow, 
by the opening and the closing flower. Yet 
each station of the day, each spot where the 
chariot of the sun rested, was dear to him : sun- 
rise, evening, the broad golden noon, the bird's 
clear song, the sudden scent of bud and bough, 
the spring's overcoming rapture, — these might 
not tempt thee, Philip, to linger on thy way, 
yet which of them didst thou ever miss? 
Often, it is true, I would accuse him, half 



TWO FRIENDS. 37 

playfully, yet half seriously, of utilitarianism, 
in a wider field than that commonly assigned 
to it, yet utilitarianism still. " You love," I 
would say, "many things beautiful and excel- 
lent, not for their own sakes, but because they 
help and cheer you to a higher aim." 

"And I," said Philip, "shall not be too 
careful to defend myself from that charge, or 
from the kindred one which you brought 
against me not many hours ago. When I lis- 
tened so fixedly to your Scandinavian legend, 
I was, as you suspected, thinking of my Young 
Men's class, and of 'improving' it for their 
benefit when we meet this evening. But did 
this make me feel and enjoy its beauty less? 
I do not share Schiller's jealousy about making 
the Ideal useful; let her be so, when and as 
she pleases. She will not, it is true, toil or 
spin ; she will not grind at the mill for any 
man ; she will not be the wife of his bosom, 
his housemate and helpmeet, not even his 
steady, reliable friend. And yet does it not 
show how great Man's spirit is, that he should 
have needs to which none but this fair, proud 



38 TWO FRIENDS. 

Queen can minister, weariness which she 
alone can soothe, griefs which only she can 
solace? There is a region within him in 
which she also serves, and serves no less truly 
because her action is, like that of all spiritual 
forces, irregular and intermittent, — an influence 
which comes unwooed, and departs unbidden, 
no more to be trained and disciplined than 
the lightning can be steadied into the fire of a 
household hearth, to live by and cook by. I 
have long loved art and poetry, because I saw 
that they had a power to raise and soften Hu- 
manity ; more lately I have seen that they are 
good in themselves, — or whence, but from their 
native affinity with the things that are more 
excellent, should come this acknowledged pow- 
er? Why, when the heart would reveal its 
truest, deepest instincts, does it seek to express 
itself in music ? Why, when the mind would 
utter forth words of nobleness, — when it would 
be truer and sweeter than it can be under its 
ordinary conditions, does it speak in poetry? 
Could there be a prose psalm?" 
" Even in dancing," I said, " there seems to 



TWO FRIENDS. 39 

be something of this desire to escape into the 
region you speak of, one less fettered, but more 
ordered than that in which we ordinarily move. 
A subtle charm lies in the apparent freedom 
of the movement, and the sense of its being 
bound to the music ; a pleasure akin to that 
which music itself gives us, in the knowledge 
that it must fall back upon an inevitable, rigor- 
ous law ; its free, proud changes are like the 
movements of a queen in captivity. The mind 
loves to feel itself under a harmonious neces- 
sity, 

1 Breaking its order, yet still to that order returning, 
Changing and winding, yet true to its Measure and Law.* 

And in obeying this it attains a double eman- 
cipation, for in confusion there is ever bond- 
age; and it is to this confusion, the want of 
rhythm and cadence in life, the absence of a 
clear purpose and intention, that it owes so 
much of its weariness and sadness. Have you 
not felt how much there is in the ordinary 
inevitable course of life which genders to bond- 
age ? * The strong hours conquer us.' We 
are straitened in ourselves and in each other, 



40 TWO FRIENDS. 

fettered to a routine which makes us often say, 
with John Bunyan, ' And so I went home to 
prison.' " 

" And this, as you say, is inevitable ; we 
blame society for being constrained and arti- 
ficial, but its conventionalities are only the 
result of the limitations of man's own nature. 
How much, for instance, of what is called 6 re- 
serve ' belongs to this life, and passes away with 
its waning, and the waxing of the new life ! 
We can say to the dying, and hear from them, 
things that, in the fulness of health and vigor, 
could not be imparted without violence to some 
inward instinct. And this is one reason, among 
many others, why it is so good to be in the 
house of mourning, the chamber of death. It 
is there more easy to be natural, — to be true, 
I mean, to that which is deepest within us. Is 
there not something in the daily, familiar course 
of life which seems in a strange way to veil its 
true aspect ? It is not Death, but Life, which 
wraps us about with shroud and cerement. 
Looking at this world as it is, I could exclaim, 
How beautiful, if one could but get at it ! I see 



TWO FRIENDS. 41 

in the heart of man an infinite desire, an infinite 
capacity for happiness ; in the outward world, 
abundant materials for its satisfaction; but 
between these two, an unseen wall of separa- 
tion. We want a door opening." 

" The ordinary events of life," I said, " are 
not strong enough to move the whole man ; its 
deeper and more passionate moments show us 
what we really are. There is a child within us 
that has not strength to come forth, until some 
outward stimulus, some strong exterior call, is 
given. And this, it seems to me, is the true 
use of the Heroic, of a life transcending life's 
ordinary possibilities ; such a life is a direct call 
upon the soul, saying, 4 Friend, come up high- 
er ' ; and the heart recognizes its voice, and 
exults in it, claims it, as the voice of kindred 
risen to a more exalted sphere. It is like air 
from a mountain summit where we could not 
live, and yet it seems our native air, and braces 
us in every nerve." 

" In teaching criminals," said Philip, " of a 
peculiarly ignorant and degraded class, I have 
often been struck w T ith their strange susceptibil- 



42 TWO FRIENDS. 

ity to what is morally exalted. To tell them of 
a deed of heroic daring, of sublime self-devotion, 
will visibly stir a fibre of their hearts, too torpid 
to respond to the ordinary appeals of duty and 
reason. I have also observed, that anything 
legendary, and verging on the supernatural, will 
fix their attention at once, as if it awakened 
within them the instinct of a spiritual nature, 
the sense that man fives not by bread alone. In 
teaching, perhaps, we usually trust too much to 
mere intelligence ; surely there are many gate- 
ways into the soul. Feeling bursts through 
them, ; making the world kin.' Art unlocks 
them gently, for Art is not the imitation of 
Nature, but a sort of side-door into her inmost 
recesses. And has it never occurred to you to 
remark, that there is a whole region, connected 
with all that is finest and purest in our nature, 
that can only be reached through sensation? As 
a look w 7 ill reveal what no word can ever speak, 
so will a scent, a sound, the spring's warm 
breath, the green unravelling of the larch- 
bough, a sudden whisper in the summer leaves, 
the bird's clear song at early morning, bring our 



TWO FRIENDS. 43 

souls into contact with the illimitable, telling us 
that we are one with ourselves, with Nature, 
and with God ; these things have power to call 
forth a music within us which has not yet had 
words set to it. Secrets are revealed to us in a 
flash of bliss, — a flash that shows us nothing, as 
when a wave retires, and does not leave at our 
feet even a shell, which we can pick up, to 
treasure and say, c This came from a further 
shore.' " 

" But the sea," I said, " implies the shore ; 
and it is something also to have heard the mur- 
mur of the broad ocean. I think that these 
moments, these intimations, which seem, as you 
once observed to me, to come from a great dis- 
tance, prove many things, — prove, above all, 
that man's spirit is not a sand-locked pool. The 
slender filaments of sensation are threads that 
bind us to a mighty whole, and it is a higher, 
more complete existence, — the life in the whole, 
— which, through them, stirs in us, perhaps to 
sleep the next moment." 

" Beethoven, if you remember," interrupted 
Philip, " said that music was the link between 



44 TWO FRIENDS. 

rational and sensitive life ; it addresses both, and 
owes to this its power ; for music, of all the 
arts, alone reaches to that within us, to which 
the others can only appeal. Like divine grace 
it gets fairly within the mind ; and while things 
that address themselves to the eye or intellect 
stand at the door and knock, it has already car- 
ried in its message, and brought us into an inner 
world, richer and sweeter than the outward one, 
yet linked w T ith it at every turn. What is there 
in life, as it now is, that answers to the feelings 
which music calls forth, — 

" Its deeper pangs, its tears 
More sweet/' — 

its storming at the citadel of feeling through a 
hundred gates at once, or winning it through 
some single secret postern? You read, you 
think, you ponder, and, lo ! a grinding organ at 
the corner of the street, playing some common 
tune, sends a fresh breath across your soul, that 
turns over a new leaf within it, writ all over 
with deeper, sweeter lore than was ever magi- 
cian's book." 

"And surely," I said, "in considering this 



TWO FRIENDS, 45 

subject, we must not forget the strange regions 
into which some of the abnormal phases of mind 
admit us. What we commonly call "excite- 
ment," is but the awakening of the whole man. 
Is it not, whether it arise from some tumult of 
inner feeling, or the pressure of strong outward 
exigency, always accompanied by a feeling of 
freedom, of power over outward nature, of 
escape from the limitations of time and space, 
by a sense of being able to triumph over them 
at will ? There is surely something significant 
in its temporary insensibility to cold, hunger, 
weariness ; while excitement lasts, we feel none 
of these. Also, in dreaming, in delirium, or 
when under the influence of narcotics, the soul 
unfurls the wings, which life, under its ordinary 
conditions, keeps pressed and folded helplessly 
against its side. The sense of power, of free- 
dom, above all, of extension, is characteristic of 
all these states ; and does not this, as an ad- 
mitted fact, throw a light upon our future life, 
proving that man's capacities are as undeveloped 
as is confessedly the case with his faculties ? We 
are used to call the accustomed order of things 



46 TWO FRIENDS. 

natural, but is it not evident that man, viewed 
in connection with this order, is a supernatural 
being? He contains within him powers and 
tendencies far greater than the present order of 
things calls out." 

" There is just now," said Philip, " a strange 
jealousy of the supernatural ; a disposition, as 
shown in rejecting whatever is miraculous, to 
restrict even God to one mode of working. In 
moral things, it is true, he has, indeed can have, 
but one form of expression ; but in material 
things, what is the supernatural but a stretch- 
ing of the senses, so as to take in a little more 
of God, an extension of our own horizon, so as 
to give us a broader view of the way in which 
he acts ? What is a miracle, once proved, but 
a fact, which extends our view of the capabili- 
ties of nature ? How are we to limit the possi- 
bilities wrapped up within any created being, as 
the butterfly is anticipated, prepared for, in the 
grub, the oak latent in the acorn ? Man, it is 
evident, even in that part of him which is sen- 
sitive, is forever touching upon a system of 
things upon which, under the present conditions 



TWO FRIENDS. 47 

of his being, he cannot enter fully. There is 
within him an enchanted land of mystery and 
beauty, a land where all slumbers, until some 
outward shock, like the kiss of the Fairy Prince, 
comes to awake it from sleep. So in that part 
of our nature which is spiritual, there is a region 
into which man cannot ascend until he is lifted 
there by God through that supernatural action 
upon the soul which we call grace ; the voice of 
the Divine Spirit wakening up the human spirit 
to its true life." 

" And hence," I said, " the connection of 
Christianity with poetry, music, nature, with all 
the purer and more exalted movements of the 
natural heart. These are helps, lifts to the 
soul ; and people feel better, more able to be- 
lieve, to love, to pray, when the finer springs 
of existence have been touched through any of 
these. Genius, like Christianity, sees all things 
in their mutual relation ; its tendency is to 
throw the many-chambered mansions of the 
soul into one. The simplest song, where its 
breath is felt, stirs something which goes 
through the whole. Is there not a delight, 



48 TWO FRIENDS. 

almost a religious pleasure, in a work of true 
imaginative genius? a delight kindred to that 
which is derived from the contemplation of 
nature, — the delight of being carried out of 
one's self into something greater and truer than 
self, because more universal. It often seems to 
me that Imagination is the highest faculty of 
man. It starts, as Faith does, from a higher 
level than any of his other powers, and on that 
level meets and familiarly accosts truths which 
reason must struggle up to. And reason does 
reach them, when they are thus foreshown, 
though, left to itself, it could never either have 
foreseen the glorious end, nor even the way that 
led to it." 

" Imagination, however," returned Philip, 
" * wins heights that it is not competent to 
keep ' ; it alights on the mountain-top, and is 
shown kingdoms in a moment of time ; but it 
cannot keep its footing on that summit. Reason 
must hew steps out of the rock ; patient experi- 
ence must follow after to make the path in 
which the wayfaring man shall not err." 

" And yet," I said, " the Idealist is always 



TWO FRIENDS. 49 

the discoverer, the one who proclaims the 
goodly vision. It has ever been so in science ; 
there is something prophetic in its very nature, 
something which ever impels it forward, and 
carries it beyond the word it is now speaking \ 
which weights that word with a meaning which 
the speaker intends not. So does the Poet 
speak out of his heart things which he knows 
not. He is a man not truer, better, or kinder 
than his fellows ; his range of practical sympa- 
thies with others is, perhaps, from his very na- 
ture, more limited than that of ordinary men. 
It is not experience, it is not feeling, it is 
instinct, that has made him at home in all that 
belongs to man. He sits beside the secret 
springs of feeling, and knows the course the 
rivers must take. He sees, but afar off and 
dimly, the whole in which the part is included. 
He who has the soul has all" 

Philip's eyes sparkled. "I know," he said, 
"no such pleasure, such emancipation, as that 
of passing from the limited self-referring view 
of things into the contemplation of absolute truth 
and beauty. I love to hear you speak thus, 



50 TWO FRIENDS. 

you, who sometimes seem to fear the broad, 
free sweep of imaginative greatness, as being in 
some way antagonistic to the spirit of Christ, 
who seem to dread, for instance, the free devel- 
opment of Art, though, after all, Art is but 
Nature in her bridal hour, the shy virgin, the 
wild woodland nymph wooed and wedded by 
man, and brought home to dwell with him." 
"I know not," I said, "how to express clearly 
what I mean; but I do feel, sometimes pain- 
fully, a contradiction between the brokenness of 
Christ and the clear perfection of Art. The 
glory of the Terrestrial is one, and the glory of 
the Celestial is another, and these stars differ, 
the one from the other in glory. In Art there 
is choice, self-pleasing, a drawing out of that 
which is obviously best ; in Christ, things which 
are not fair are yet pronounced good, prizeable. 
Sometimes, after reading such a book, we will 
say, as Shakespeare, I have been conscious of a 
strange inner dissatisfaction, which I can only 
describe as being the sense of an impaired com- 
munion ; and something has said within me, 
4 All this is not of the Father, but of the world.' 



TWO FRIENDS. 51 

I do not feel this in reading any book of a sus- 
tained philosophic interest, as its scope, if not 
directly religious, carries you among the deep 
and elevating realities which are not far from 
the Kingdom, and indeed belong to it ; but I do 
feel it in that mixed region of wit, and fancy, 
and feeling which belongs to our mortal state as 
such, and which seems in no way to bear upon 
our inner or our future life ; and what is this 
region but a world without souls, a world of sad 
and ruined beauty, when looked at with refer- 
ence to man's true destinies, and yet a rich and 
glorious world ? I see in Art and Literature, in 
the subjects with which they deal, in the absorb- 
ing, intoxicating devotion they demand, some- 
thing which reminds me of the Greek worship 
of Dionysus, "the God of flourishing, decaying, 
changeable life," the kindler of a lofty enthusi- 
asm, the intensifier of life, the exalter of its pleas- 
ures, the deepener of its pangs, the bestower of 
an impassioned sympathy with Nature. And 
by the side of this regal Being, robed in the 
purple he was born to, with garments not too 
careful of a stain, I see another form, severe, 



52 TWO FRIENDS. 

restricted, also life's deepener, its intensifies but 
after how different a spirit ! The first is of the 
earth, earthy ; the second is the Lord from 
heaven. 

" The rose, ho ! the rose is the grace of the earth, 
Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it." 

The rose drunk with its own fragrance and 
beauty ; the smell of the fresh earth hangs about 
it, — it is wet with the dews of heaven. ' En- 
joy me,' it says, ' for I am the rose, I am fair, 
I five but a day ' ; it needs the broad sunlight, 
the free sweeping winds, it can bloom even on 
the battle-field, and grow redder with the blood 
of heroes. But Christ's flower grows under- 
neath the snow, in a broken flower-pot, in a 
darkened cellar, anywhere ; its petals are pale, 
and it seldom opens fully ; but when it expands 
so as to show its heart, what do we see there 
but the Cross and the emblems of the Pas- 
sion?" .... 

Philip was silent a long while ; at last he said, 
musingly, — 

" I have felt the antagonism you speak of. I 
have found it out, as I have found out many 



TWO FRIENDS. 53 

antagonisms and affinities, by their helping or 
hindering me in my work. I shall never forget 
sitting at an open window of a little parsonage, 
in the west of England, during great part of a 
golden summer's afternoon, reading Keats ; the 
garden was full of flowers, and I read my book 
to the scent of mignonette and pinks, as to a 
music stealing within every sense. It was one 
of those warm, brooding days that steep the 
spirit in delight; all around was silence, the 
stillness not so much of sleep as of nature in a 
blissful dream. Then an uneasy consciousness 
came across me, breaking the delicious spell. I 
ought to be setting forth on my parish round. I 
started. First on my list came an aged woman, 
almost stone-deaf, ignorant, but anxious. I had 
to sit beside her before a huge fire ; her son 
worked at his loom in an inner room, and did 
not cease when I began to read. How hot and 
noisy the cottage seemed ; how contracted all 
around me ! Had the world of light and beauty 
I lived and moved in but half an hour ago 
collapsed into this ? How confused, too, seemed 
my own statements, my very utterance thick 



54 TWO FRIEXDS. 

and hesitating, as of one under a heavy thrall, 
for my heart was with Endymion, and I had to 
tell the story of Christ ; to tell it from its begin- 
ning to its end ; to tell it, too, to a person to 
whom it was really news, and received as such 

with eager childlike interest Another time, 

and here the revulsion was even keener, this 
was in winter, New Year's day, also an after- 
noon ; one of those days when the clear frosty 
air seems to make thought itself more definite, 
and to send it forth with an arrowy keenness. 
You know the cathedral at ; I was walk- 
ing beneath it with a friend, eagerly discussing 
Homer ; the sun went down, all that fine range 
of buildings stood up clear against the solemn, 
rose-flushed sky. We spoke of the antique 
world ; its simplicity, its freedom, its ever youth- 
ful, self-renewing charm. I was suddenly called 
away to see a woman supposed to be dying. I 
found her, as regarded spiritual receptivity, far 
below the old friend I have just spoken of. 
Hers was the unawakened, unenlightened mind, 
within which the sense of sin and need has 
never sent a piercing ray, or a quickening 



TWO FRIENDS. 55 

throb ; one of the class to whom a visit from 
a clergyman is a viaticum and nothing more. 
Her husband, an elderly working-man, received 
me at the door with much show of friendliness ; 
as he seemed disposed to talk, I sat with him a 
few minutes before I went to the sick woman. 
By way, I suppose, of making himself agreeable 
to me, he brought forth some tracts, and began 
to speak of religion in a patronizing sort of way, 
not uncommon amongst the poor, as if it were 
an accomplishment, something admirable in its 
own way, — an acquisition, like knowing French 
or Latin, to those who possessed it, but by no 
means of universal obligation. ' Yes,' he said, 
4 they were very pretty reading, he had no fault 
to find with them ; prayer, too, was a nice 
thing; good talk was very pretty and very nice/ 
I found that neither he nor any of his family 
ever attended church, or any place of worship. 
He took me to a small inner room, dark and 
close, in which were two beds, almost filling it. 
The sick woman was in one, suffering much 
from spasms, too ill apparently to fix her mind 
upon what I said. I spoke with her, however, 



56 TWO FRIENDS. 

as I best could. Seating myself, in the absence 
of any chair, upon the other bed, suddenly I felt 
something move beneath me. The poor woman 
hastened to apologize : it was her grown-up son 
sleeping off the drunken frolic of the night be- 
fore, — New Year's Eve." 

" But these," I said, laughing, " were very 
sharp contrasts, very sudden descents into the 
actual ; no wonder your system was jarred and 
shaken a little rudely. You might have been 
called to such a dying-bed as that you were tell- 
ing me of yesterday, the poor woman, " the 
sinner exceedingly," who had spent literally 
more than half of her short and evil life in 
prisons, dying in jail at last, ignorant, hopeless, 
yet not without hope, for Christ died for the 
ungodly. In such a case the transition from 
the ideal to the actual would have been keen, 
perhaps, but less perplexing." 

" True," returned Philip, "because in the 
human soul 8 one deep calleth to another.' 
There is a poetry in crime, in excessive want 
and wretchedness, in fact in all the fierce ex- 
tremes of life, that lifts the soul above its ordi- 



TWO FRIENDS. 57 

nary level, that stirs human nature to its very- 
depths, and makes us know that 

' We have all of us one human heart, 
All mortal thoughts confess a common home.' 

Life can be transfigured through anguish as well 
as through blessedness, and Christ still shows 
himself, as in the mediaeval legends, in the form 
of the leper and the outcast. But after all, 
such keen emotions do not make up the staple 
of spiritual any more than of natural life. It 
is among the ignorant, the out-of-the-way, the 
commonplace, that the Christian's daily lot is 
thrown, and their daily appeals are to him as 
sacred as those which come more seldom, and 
with a louder knocking at the gate. That 
Christianity should so fit in w T ith the ordinary 
and mediocre has always seemed to me a proof 
of its crowning excellence. < A little child shall 
lead them,' this, it seems to me, is the pass-word 
into this kingdom of greatness and simplicity. 
All other ideals draw away the heart from real 
life ; the poet, the artist, is continually trying to 
break out of the narrow circle of visible things ; 
he 'asks for better bread than can be made 



58 TWO FRIENDS. 

with wheat.' The Christian ideal alone meets 
the habitual, the practical, — meets it while im- 
measurably transcending it, — embraces it, and 
walks with it hand in hand. The Christian 
must be friends with every day, with its nar- 
row details, its homely atmosphere; its loving 
correction must make him great." 

He paused for a moment. 

"Is there not," he said, "the very life-core of 
Christianity in this picture, — the broken tomb 
and the risen Christ, the angels in their shining 
garments, the linen clothes folded, and laid in a 
place by themselves ? " 




NE morning I found Philip looking 
over some of my papers ; he took 
up one, "A Soul's History," and 



began to read it aloud. 



" The soul is a rare essence ; like the quick 
And subtle spirit of the rose, it floods 
Each chamber of its earthly house with fragrance, 
Yet leaves, like it, no lingering breath behind, 
Its sweetness taking with it where it goes ; 
Else had this grave, like His, who, once of old, 
Slept in a garden-tomb, been full of odors ; 
And through this bare, black ground would roses spring, 
To tell of one who lies within, wrapt round 
In folds of linen clean and white ; embalmed 
In sweeter tears than ever fell from gums 
Of Araby the Blest. 

" Beside this open grave one winter morn 
I stood as if alone, the hundreds round me 
Swayed by one thought, and by a single name 



60 TWO FRIENDS. 

Together bound so close, it seemed one heart 
Held by one sorrow, by one hope uplifted ; 
Upon the stillness fell the words of Christ: 
1 1 am the life, and I the resurrection ; 
He that in me believeth shall not die ' ; 
And through the sound of falling earth, the voice 
Went steadfast on : * As God unto himself 
In mercy hath been pleased to take the soul 
Of this our Brother ' — pausing ere the word 
It faltered forth — ' of this our Father ' ; then 
One sob broke forth, for, oh ! on this our earth 
We have not many Fathers ! few who go 
To meet the wanderer on his homeward way, 
Who watch him yet afar, who on the threshold 
With welcome wait, and reconciling tear. 

" Thou knewest him, this man of faith and power ; 
Thou knewest him, this Son of Consolation, 
God's Levite of the kindlier covenant. 
On thine his soul, a white and lucid star, 
Shook down serene its full meridian splendor, 
For thou didst know him in that after-summer 
God ofttimes gives the good, that they may see 
Their soul's deep travail satisfied in part, 
And bless him ere they pass from life away; 
But I had known him in his rise and falling, 
Had seen him sit upon the earth, as one 
Astonished, desolate, within his heart 
An arrow and the fragments of a song. 

" * What aileih thee that now 
Thou comest back so soon, my child; 



TWO FRIENDS. 61 

In that garden fair, meihought, all day, 
Till the shadows fell thou wouldst wait to play" ; 
So spake the mother mild. 

" But the child said, weeping sore, 

1 / have been where the roses blow, 
The ruby red and the maiden's blush, 
And the damask rose in its velvet flush, 

And the white rose dropping snow. 

" * I will never pluck roses more, 
Go take of these. . . .' " 

" I like this poem," he said. " Why have 
you left it unfinished?" 

I looked at the date, which was many years 
back. " Perhaps," I answered, " because my 
heart, since those days, has, in some degree, de- 
parted from the idea upon which it is founded." 

" And your idea," said Philip, " was that of 
a life rising, through earthly blight and disap- 
pointment, into high spiritual perfection ; the 
flowers of individual love dropping off to give 
place to ripe, universal charity. I see you have 
written, a little further on, — 

* Seek not to live, to die in any heart. 
This earthly rose, if pressed, will yield the thorn ; 
0, let it bloom, its odor still diffusing! ' " 



62 TWO FRIENDS. 

" Yes," I said, " the idea of a beautiful moral 
and spiritual life, being built up out of the ruins 
of the fair fabric of natural hope and happiness, 
is a favorite one, we all know, in religious fic- 
tion; take, as an instance, Lamartine's exqui- 
site story of the Stone-cutter of St. Point ; and 
it has undoubtedly been in some degree realized 
in actual life, but far less often and less fully 
than the commonplaces which prevail with ref- 
erence to affliction would lead us to believe. 
All that passes current upon this subject is 
founded upon a partial truth, which ignores a 
deeper one, which is this, that the plant of Hu- 
manity does not live by its root only, however 
firmly this may be fixed ; it breathes at every 
pore, through leaf and blossom ; it is nourished 
by the curling tendrils that seem but to adorn 
it. If these be torn off too unsparingly, its 
fruit will be the poorer ; if its bark be stripped, 
it will live, but as dying. How often do we see 
the growth of a life stopped ! — a life unable, 
either from the blight of unfriendly outward 
circumstances, or the strange warp of some 
radical inward contradiction, to reveal the true 
beauty of its nature." 



TWO FRIENDS. 63 

" It seems to me," said Philip, " that I have 
known such lives, unable to shoot up straight 
to heaven, like the palm, or to bend down 
richly laden to earth, like the banian ; lives off 
the usual track ; lives in which there is a pain- 
ful secret, and yet pure, exalted lives ; truer and 
nobler in their aim, richer even in their attain- 
ment, than those whose development has been 
more free and happy ; souls that utter not their 
perfect worth, yet are sweet in the very broken- 
ness of their music." 

" True ; yet it is certain that something 
artificial and distorted is apt to creep within 
a life, which, from whatever cause, is unable 
to flow along in the broad channel of such 
interests as are common to humanity. There 
are many ghosts in life, appearing in the noon- 
day as well as at midnight. Dead hopes and 
loves come back in strange forms; tenderness 
changed to an irritable sensitiveness ; clinging 
affection to grasping vanity. The tendrils that 
have lost their natural object still find some- 
thing to cling round; but what? A cold am- 
bition ; a thin transfiguration of self. Do you 



64 TWO FRIENDS. 

know the story of Agusina, the Greenlander, 
one of the most earnest and gifted among the 
converts of the United Brethren ? His own 
people would listen to him with singular vener- 
ation, as he spoke to them of Christ, of the 
breath of the Spirit, ' wafting the heart to Him, 
as the sea-grass is driven to shore on the current 
of the tide.' < His love,' he would say, 4 melts 
the heart, as the sun melts the snow ; and then 
it is as with the lamp, when fresh oil is poured 
into it; it burns brighter, and can enkindle 
others. O Assarsoi ! * when I speak of thee, 
my heart grows tender, as the moss in spring, 
and soft, as the eider fowl's breast, when shel- 
tering its young ! ' He had an only daughter, 
Beata, aged fifteen, who read the Scriptures to 
him each evening, when their voices were heard 
to ascend together in hymns. His wife was 
dead; all his near relations, parents, brother, 
and sisters, were gone, but not until he had per- 
suaded them to embrace Christianity. Beata 
prepared his meals, and took charge of all; 
when he came home from his hunting or fish- 

* Redeemer. 



TWO FRIENDS. 65 

ing, she would stand anxiously waiting his re- 
turn. She, too, was taken from him by death. 
Agusina bore the shock but feebly. Except 
Christ, he said, she was his all on earth ; he 
missed his loved companion, when he came from 
the sea or from the mountains ; even the words 
of Scripture, heard from her lips no longer* 
seemed to lose half their charm. He gave way 
to excessive sorrow ; but it was after the first 
violence of this passed over, that the mission- 
aries observed a singular transformation. Self- 
complacency rushed in to fill the void which 
had fallen on his desolated soul; his heart 
became self-centred; it found a solace in the 
respect paid by his people ; a flattering unc- 
tion in the veneration and interest with which, 
at the gatherings for hunting and fishing, they 
listened to his words. There was a chance 
even in his outward aspect and bearing, a 
change visible to all. At last one of the faith- 
ful Moravians spoke to him of it freely ; he lis- 
tened in surprise and displeasure. A few days 
afterwards, however, he came, confessing it was 
true ; that he had striven to deal with himself 



66 TWO FRIENDS. 

faithfully, and that God had given him light: 
his mind was still so disturbed that he absent- 
ed himself from the Holy Communion. And 
weeks passed over; no one saw Agusina at 
the meetings or the confessions ; and when the 
Moravians sought him out, they found him, 
they say, ' in happy intercourse with the Friend 
of his soul, but with the hand of death upon 
him.' He was going, he said, to Beata ; ' earth 
was no longer safe for him; it was full of 
snares ; and God was, in his mercy, about 
to take him away.' On the last day of his 
life, his people gathered round him. All the 
strength and self-possession of his soul had re- 
turned. 'His countenance,' says the Mora- 
vian writer, 'seemed to us like that of an 
angel.' In the dim December day, more by 
the light of the snow than of the sky, they laid 
him, with a solemn prayer and hymn, in his 
Beata's grave, close to her moss-wrapped re- 
mains. 

" This story has always seemed to me deeply 
affecting, and the more so from my having, not 
many years ago, heard a pendant to it, in the 



TWO FRIENDS. 67 

case of a distinguished man now living, in 
whose character vanity of a transparent sort 
had always been noticeable ; yet it was remark- 
able, I was told, into what strong, unsubdued 
relief this had come since the death of his be- 
loved only child. But, to consider this subject 
in a broader light, — is there not something fal- 
lacious in looking at affliction as a sort of divine 
alchemy, with power in itself to transmute and 
sublimate ? At the most, it can but work upon 
what it finds ; it purges the dross from the gold, 
according to the image so frequently employed 
in Scripture, but does not change the original 
nature of the ore into one of nobler quality. 

" And to extend our view a little further, can 
anything be more false than the so often re- 
peated maxim, that good comes out of evil, 
moral evil ? — never, in the sense of being pro- 
duced by it. All that evil can do, is to make 
good manifest ; as oppression calls forth heroism, 
or, as in family life, the selfishness of one mem- 
ber brings out the excellence of another. Yet, 
in the very instances where this is most admira- 
bly shown, we may still say, that ' if one mem- 



68 TWO FRIENDS. 

ber suffer, all the members suffer with it ' ; all 
life is organic, and no individual ever neglects 
or violates a moral or social obligation, but a 
wound, more or less directly felt, goes through 
the whole. The work of righteousness is 
peace ; the natural tendency of good is to re- 
produce itself: even so does evil sow itself ad 
infinitum; unless, through repentance, it ceases 
to be evil, and even, after repentance, the seed 
beforehand cast into the earth will still come up. 
We see this in the life of nations. What con- 
fusion and anarchy result from forced appropri- 
ation and unequal laws ! A life may slowly get 
over a great sorrow, but when does a country 
get over a great wrong ? Germany was at least 
two centuries in recovering from the effects of 
the Thirty Years' War, and it is certain that 
Italy yet suffers from the desolating invasions of 
the sixteenth century. What has Ireland been 
to England, or Poland to Russia, but a standing 
perplexity from age to age ? What else is the 
African population even now to America ? It 
is not only the wronged who suffer. The roots 
of Humanity are so inextricably intertwined, 



TWO FRIENDS. 69 

that we must grow altogether if we grow at all. 
Every warp and canker tells upon the whole." 

" True," said Philip, " as regards evil of a 
moral kind; but in pain and affliction, into 
which this element does not enter, I see much 
of the alchemy which you disallow. There is 
something in man which needs sorrow, a hum- 
bling, purifying work as regards his spiritual 
recreation, which cannot go on without its min- 
istry. How many heavenly seeds would never 
spring to life but for its loosening, detaching 
agency, breaking up the hard, stony soil of 
nature ! And to the believer, what is affliction 
but God's hand upon his head to bless him, his 
Father's hand, recognized through that heavy 
pressure ? Think how Christianity exalts, al- 
most enthrones sorrow." 

" Because," I said, " Christianity itself is 
among us as one that is wounded, ' free among 
the dead,' and only free there. Do you not see 
that Christianity, under its present manifesta- 
tion, is remedial, separation and sorrow are its 
natural friends ? Consider, for instance, how 
great, even to disproportion, is the strain which 



70 TWO FRIENDS. 

the Gospel lays upon the passive qualities of the 
soul, those which tend to the death of the natural 
man, — acquiescence, long-suffering, self-abnega- 
tion. The Earth is given to the meek, and 
Heaven to the poor in spirit. Christ's kingdom 
is a kingdom of patience. Think of that sol- 
emn walk, when he ' went before ' his disciples 
to Jerusalem; his counsel of absolute self-re- 
nunciation to the young ruler; his acceptance 
of Peter's 'Lo! we have left all ' ; his rebuke 
to the self-seeking of the two brethren ; his un- 
folding of his own approaching humiliation. 
What is it but a call to Humanity to strip off its 
garments one by one, riches, affection, glory, 
and lay them down in the way by which its 
Lord walks to death." 

" If I follow your meaning clearly," returned 
Philip, " you would say that there is a natural 
grandeur and completeness, which the soul, if 
it would have Christ formed within it, must be 
content to miss." 

" And this because Christianity does not as yet 
take in the whole of man ; it is the bringer of 
the sword, setting one part of his nature in array 



TWO FRIENDS. 71 

against the other ; it bids him emphatically lay 
down his life, but to what end ? That he may 
take it again. We do not gain a true conception 
of Christianity until we look at it under this 
twofold aspect ; until we see in it a seed sown 
in weakness to be raised in power; until we 
covet, for every individual soul, that restitution 
which the Universal Church will one day most 
certainly enjoy, — the taking again of life in 
Christ. Christ is most truly and deeply a man 
of sorrows ; yet in his revelation there is nothing 
of that dull and aimless suffering which in nat- 
ural life is so saddening and perplexing. The 
song of Moses and of the Lamb, which none but 
the redeemed can sing, has the burden of the old 
Greek chorus, 

* Sing sorrow, strife and sorrow, but let Victory remain ! ' 

Understand well that I do not disallow sorrow ; 
it has its appointed time and work, but when 
that is over, let it go ; it is a hireling, and re- 
maineth not in the house forever ; but the son 
remaineth ever, — and the son is Isaac, a son 
of laughter. Nothing appears to me more shal- 



72 TWO FRIENDS. 

low, than the mode of viewing life which looks 
upon pain 6 as the deepest thing in our nature, 
and union through pain the closest of any.' 
Sorrow is essentially separative. What is its ex- 
tremest form — insanity — but isolation? The 
French, with as much truth as tenderness, call 
the insane les alienes. The mind, broken in 
itself, has lost the power of blending with other 
minds ; its action returns upon itself. Joy is a 
uniting thing ; it builds up, while it enlarges, 
the whole nature ; it is the wine to strengthen 
man's heart, to brace it to every noble enter- 
prise. Schiller's crown was well won with that 
one saying, ' Was ist dem Gcliiclclichen zu 
schwerV " 

" ' Res severa est verum gaudiumj " said Philip. 
"I have sometimes thought, that, as regards 
spiritual things, we shall not arrive at this, 
the bringing in of the sacrifices of joy, except 
through a fuller realization of our organic unity 
in Christ. Gladness can scarcely be a solitary 
thing, the very life of praise seems choral, it is 
more than one bounded heart can utter. Its 
finest expressions are those that, in the Psalms, 



TWO FRIENDS. 73 

and some ancient Canticles, call on Nature, even 
that which is not conscious and animate, to swell 
its harmony : — 

* ye showers and dew, praise ye the Lord ! ' 

Once, even in music, I was content with mel- 
ody ; a tune, with its sweetness, like that of a 
tinkling rill, was enough to gladden me ; now 
my heart asks for a deeper spell. Surely when 
one has once entered into the blissful secrets of 
harmony, the note seems to suggest the chord, 
to ask to be built up within it." 

" What you say reminds me of a strange 
pleasure, the intense consciousness of existence, 
which one sometimes feels in a crowd, especially 
if that crowd be animated by one common feel- 
ing, and that of an exalting kind. Life seems 
lifted out of its ordinary conditions, as if in the 
whole it recovered something which the part had 
missed. Does the heart in these moments re- 
claim some wide affinity, and ask to be built 
within the human chord ? " 

U I think," said Philip, "there is some feel- 
ing akin to this in the pleasure which exten- 

4 



74 TWO FRIENDS. 

sion gives, something which intensifies feeling, 
through bringing within it the sense of infinity, 
as when we gaze over any great reach of coun- 
try, with the cattle upon a thousand hills, or 
across the sea, with ships dropping under the 
rim of the horizon. In the sight of any great 
town from some little distance, or in looking 
down at evening upon some sheltered hamlet, 
what a deep and tender sentiment steals across 
the mind ! We know that the city is not the 
Celestial one, neither is the village Arcadian, yet 
the impression left upon the heart is one of 
peace, ' Peace and good-will with all mankind.' 
Breadth always imparts the feeling of serenity ; 
all that is narrow and contradictory melts away 
in it. 

' Colors laid 
Upon the canvas oft the sense invade 
Too suddenly, and wound the aching eye ; 
Yet when did aught beneath the open sky 
Seem harsh or violent t So sun and shade 
Attemper all.' 

Even so in contemplating men, say soldiers, 
weavers, colliers, in a collective body, we feel 
the heart drawn out in a deeper sympathy and 



TWO FRIENDS. 75 

interest, which none among them, perhaps, as 
individuals, would command. I have felt this 
strongly without being able to analyze it." 

" Does it not arise from being brought within 
the influence of the broad tendencies of human- 
ity, where individual limitations disappear, swept 
away by the force of the current? Such mo- 
ments say to us, c Behold the Man ! ' — they 
are baptismal, and endue the soul with much 
strength. The slender stream of individual life 
is choked by many rocks and rapids ; the strong- 
est heart knows that there are stones upon which 
it has already fallen and been broken, that bar- 
riers are before it never to be wholly overpast ; 
therefore it loves to hope, to strive for the 
many. Passion, interest, caprice, belong to the 
individual, and in this, surely, lies the strength of 
the saying, Vox populi, vox Dei, that a number 
of persons acting together are naturally less 
under the control of circumstance, 4 this world's 
unspiritual God,' are less fettered by prejudice, 
than the few. Also we know that in every 
lump there is a leaven of nobleness, some, 
perhaps many, tender and truthful souls. The 



76 TWO FRIENDS. 

heart of a people, if it could but speak, is always 
in its right place ." 

" And it is this," said Philip, " that makes all 
that belongs to national existence, the songs, the 
customs upon which the life of a people has 
left its stamp, so interesting, so unspeakably 
affecting." 

" And it is this, too," I continued, " which 
gives such a double dye to all sins against na- 
tional freedom, which is but the expression of a 
people's life. If it is a crime to slay a man, 
what must it be to strike at a nation; to kill 
man in his organic life; to cut the nerves of 
universal endeavor ; to aim at man's heart 
through those relations with his fellow-men, 
which are the veins through which his life-blood 
flows, in which alone he can live and move and 
have his secular being ? Slavery stabs man both 
in his individual and in his organic life, and every 
minor degree of oppression is the snapping of a 
bond which knits one man to his fellows, and 
the whole man to God. The oppressed man 
does not live. There are no crimes so great as 
political crimes. To break faith with a nation 



TWO FRIENDS. 77 

is to break a deeper trust, to blight a fuller hope, 
than can be involved in any treachery towards 
an individual. Who is this, the true Antichrist, 
he that denieth the Father and the Son, but the 
absolutist, the tyrant ? We are not surely suf- 
ficiently sensible of the Atheism involved in the 
deep iniquity of oppression. It is the denial of 
G-od, through the denial of man ; the setting up 
of what is partial and arbitrary against that 
which is universal ; in other words, the assertion 
of will against law." 

44 The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit 
of the Lord is there is liberty, because ther^ only 
is the recognition of man's spiritual prerogative, 
the freedom of the will, the power to choose. 
All rational legislation is founded upon the idea 
of man's being a governable being, and this, in 
its turn, rests upon the basis of a moral and 
intelligent Governor of the world. When a 
community has lost faith in God, it cannot 
achieve freedom for man, even when it starts, as 
in the French Revolution, with being fanatically 
in love with it; it quickly relapses into abso- 
lutism, and the governing of the masses by force. 



78 TWO FRIENDS. 

All materialism genders to bondage ; it is linked 
with the ideas of fate and necessity ; they are 
its powers, and they leave room for but one wor- 
ship, that of the God of Forces. How strange it 
seems that the idea of liberty should ever be 
associated with that of lawlessness, when, in 
fact, it is the arbitrary, which is really unsettled 
and reversible, depending on the breath which 
called it forth. All national greatness requires 
that which can only coexist with freedom, a slow, 
safe growth under assured protection ; law not 
depending on power, but power being founded 
upon law." 

• • • • • 

" And how much," resumed Philip, " is the 
spirit of Freedom connected with the sentiment 
of nationality ! A slave has no country,, no 
national existence, and wherever there is a 
strong awakening to liberty, it does not find 
expression, as might have been looked for, in a 
broad cosmopolitanism, but in bringing out more 
fully the distinctive physiognomy of each people. 
When a nation grows, it grows as an individ- 
ual does, in its own shape. I sometimes wonder 



TWO FRIENDS. 79 

how far this tendency will act upon the future 
destinies of the great Church of Christ. There 
is nothing more evident in the whole history of 
the Church of Rome, than its hostility to all de- 
velopment of a national kind, its determination 
to mould, at whatever cost, the European world 
to its own pattern." 

" Will it any longer," I said, " receive that 
pattern ? " 

" I know not ; but Rome's hand, ever firm 
linked with that of material despotism, cannot 
now, in the nature of things, lie so heavy on the 
nations, as in the days when these two gave 
their power and strength to each other. Will 
the breaking up of Popery be connected with 
the rise of churches really national, able to feed 
the flocks of which they are the guardians ; 
churches built upon the rock of Christ, in all 
that concerns faith and doctrine, yet, because 
Christ lives, living also, advancing with the ad- 
vancing age, able to understand its needs, to in- 
terpret its aspirations, to give it back those 
very aspirations, clothed as Aaron was, in gar- 
ments of glory and of beauty, — churches whose 



80 TWO FRIENDS. 

priests, like those of old, will ' go before ' the 
people? It seems to me that the Church of 
Scotland, if not such a Church as this, is at 
least a national Church, fitting the national 
character, so that it is hard to say whether it 
was made for the Scotch, or they for it ; it is the 
educator and guide of the people, the expres- 
sion of their intellectual and spiritual life, the 
home of the poor man's affections and hopes. 
Such also, I believe, but here I cannot speak 
from personal observation, is Roman Catholicism 
in Ireland; a guide, a companion, a familiar 
friend, that to which the national heart turns. 
In England the Established Church has missed 
this ; it has not won the heart of the poor." 

" And yet," I said, " the Church of England 
also represents England, and perhaps in that 
aspect of it, which falls short of what exalted 
minds desire, it illustrates a very valuable part 
of the national character. The tendency of the 
English mind is practical, it is not remorseless 
in its logical requirements ; it is content to leave 
many things as it finds them, undetermined, 
to work with them as they are. The English 



TWO FRIENDS. 81 

mind has never shown itself in love with an 
ideal; in political things it has never drawn 
forth the image of liberty, in clear abstract per- 
fection, as the French have done. Freedom 
does not sit for her picture in England. Why- 
should she, when we have her going in and out 
among us, a daily household friend, whose fea- 
tures are too familiar to be much noticed ? Sa 
in the things of God, the English mind is one 
that must have room. It sees that the Bible is 
not a systematic book, neither is the Church a 
symmetrical building, nor the exigencies of the 
human spirit of the kind that can be sounded 
by line, or mapped out by compass, and it does 
not insist upon making them what they are 
not." 

"In individuals," said Philip, "I can see how 
the very desire for completeness springs from a 
limited view of life, from failing to see how 
great, complicated, and out-reaching a thing it 
is. To minds of this class all truth appears 
under a strict and absolute aspect, to which life 
as it is cannot respond ; this, joined to a pure 
and rigid conscientiousness, gives you the man 

4* F 



82 TWO FRIENDS. 

who, like Lamennais, breaks not only the whole 
purpose of his life, but his heart itself, over his 
fair, unfound ideal. Among all nations, the 
English, as you say, have least of this, and of 
that which goes along with it, a tendency to 
fanaticism, where the mind is so driven up to a 
single truth, as to seek to explain all nature by 
it, wrenching, lopping off whatever does not, 
will not, fit. But, on the other hand, we miss 
in some degree what the more ardent, if more 
limited, nature arrives at, — that which makes 
martyrs, missionaries." 

" And yet," I said, " even here we have not 
been found wanting, and shall not be. There 
is a practical enthusiasm, and this is ours ; an 
energy which will not kindle up for an abstract 
truth, but which, once convinced of the motive 
excellence of such, once finding it work towards 
a tangible, worthy aim, will carry it out with 
unflinching perseverance. All that the English 
nation needs is to believe more implicity than 
it has yet done, and then it will work wonders. 
It is now high noon with us ; what we, with the 
universal Church, need, is the midday miracle, 



TWO FRIENDS. 83 

the Light, like that which appeared unto Saul 
of Tarsus, above the brightness of the sun, in 
the clear conviction of the understanding, the 
full consent of the will, the turning of the heart 
to God, whose Word endureth forever in 
heaven. When we believe in miracles, when we 
expect them, then we shall see them, then we shall 
work them, and not until then" 

" Some years ago," said Philip, " I read some 
interesting tracts on Church subjects by a Mr. 
Applegarth, in which he remarked that there 
had always been a lurking Pelagianism in the 
Church of England. I did not understand at 
the time what he meant ; but since then I have 
seemed to discover this tendency, in its remark- 
able deadness to the gifts and calling of the Holy 
Spirit. Any drawing to a closer and more devot- 
ed walk with Christ is apt to be set down to the 
score of enthusiasm, and is not recognized, as I 
think it is in almost every other communion, as 
coming from God. Witness the pertinacious 
attachment of Presbyterianism to its ' called ' 
ministry, the 'leadings ' of Quakers and Mora- 
vians, the < vocation ' of the Church of Rome. 



84 TWO FRIENDS. 

There is a timidity and half-heartedness about 
us in this matter, which is unworthy of what we 
are in others ; a want of clearly recognizing the 
consequences of those great spiritual facts which 
we speculatively accept as true. 

" And I think the same timidity and want of 
confidence in a Divine leading is shown in our 
superstitious dread of discussion and alteration. 
A people that believes the Bible to be from God 
will not fear to appeal often and searchingly to 
human reason ; a Church that believes in the 
Trinity will not be very jealous to retain the 
Athanasian Creed. In true faith there is noth- 
ing of a vice-like, mechanical grasp ; its hold is 
firm and free ; because it holds with the living 
hand, it can afford to let go what it no longer 
needs, while Formalism is like the false mother 
in Solomon's judgment, it cares not whether the 
child be alive or dead, so long as it is there, to 
be shown when it is asked for. It seems ad- 
mitted now on all hands, that our Church would 
gain much by adaptation and elasticity ; shorter 
and more varied services, a fuller recognition of 
the services of the laity, would do much to en- 



TWO FRIENDS. 85 

dear her to the people. Yet we run on in the 
accustomed groove. The most difficult chapters 
from the Old Testament are constantly read in 
our churches ; but when the sermon comes, it 
contains no word of comment, of explanation ; it 
makes no attempt to throw light upon those yet 
more difficult passages of human experience, to 
which our hearts, our homes, every hour bear 
witness, and which it is the glory of the Gospel 
to reconcile : it is generally the Gospel unap- 
plied. The views which are presented to us are 
true, but brought into no relation with what we 
are doing or thinking about. God's commands 
are as little arbitrary as they are grievous ; there 
is in the two Sacraments, in Prayer, in all things 
ordained by Him, a rationale : why not some- 
times present us with it ? " 

" One thing," returned Philip, "is abundantly 
significant of our present time ; it will not, as 
former ages have done, rest under the shadow 
of forms and creeds in which it does not believe. 
In reading the history of those times, you must 
have been struck with the real, yet wholly un- 
vivifying belief, which people of the most evil 



86 TWO FRIENDS. 

hearts and lives kept upon the great central 
truths of revelation, and this in the case of both 
Catholics and Protestants. A trebly-dyed mur- 
derer, like Leicester, commends himself in his 
will ' to the alone merits of Jesus Christ,' with 
a fervor which is not quite hypocrisy, but some- 
thing which is, I think, even more fearful. Noth- 
ing is to me more strange and appalling than 
their general acceptance of these truths as math- 
ematical certainties, as things laid alongside of 
their actual life, without ever touching or quick- 
ening their spiritual consciousness. I have seen 
something of this in a less repulsive form among 
the poor of our own age, — belief and conscience 
running on in two parallel lines which never 
meet ; also, among people of the last generation, 
a belief in revelation, and a respect for it, which 
is not vivifying, and yet is belief, if not faith. 
But we do not, cannot, so accept these eternal 
verities. Our age needs more, asks more. Its 
Church must be a sheltering tree, stretching out 
her boughs unto the river, and her branches 
unto the sea; not a pyramid, however awful 
and venerable, that does but cast a shadow across 



TWO FRIENDS. 87 

the desert. How significant are the notices, that 
now reach us, from those who are familiar with 
the signs of spiritual life on the Continent ! 
Materialism making rapid strides, both in Prot- 
estant and Romish countries ; persons of the 
class who would formerly have lived under the 
forms of religion, without being influenced by its 
power, are now rejecting it as a whole, professing 
open disbelief in all save that which can be seen 
and experienced ; denying the capability of man 
to know anything of the unseen world. And 
yet, alongside of this, in Protestant and Romish 
countries alike, is growing up a counter move- 
ment ; sometimes shown, as in part of the Lu- 
theran Church, in a return and a passionate 
attachment to the old forms and creeds, which 
are now to it things having and giving life ; 
sometimes appearing under less-defined outlines ; 
a soul, perhaps, that still wants a body to work 
in ; a desire of the heart towards Christ and his 
appearing. There is at present a sifting of the 
nations, and when it is over, this that cannot be 
shaken will remain. It sometimes seems to me 
that we are on the verge of a great constructive 



88 TWO FRIENDS. 

era. Men are beginning to repair the old wastes, 
the desolations of many generations. The Crit- 
ical is now having its day ; we may compare its 
work to that clearing away, which is the first 
sign of improvement ; but its day must pass, as 
nothing of a simply negative kind can be lasting. 
Then comes a glad rebuilding, of which I can 
but prophesy dimly ; but I foresee that the per- 
son and work of Christ will be its centre. 

" And ' He, when he is lifted up, will draw 
all men unto him.' Is there not among us a 
manifest desire for union, an impatience of those 
Shibboleths, those inner tests, which, in Protes- 
tant countries, tend to needless exclusivism and 
separation ; an impatience with all that, like the 
arrogant pretensions of Rome, making itself 
alone in the earth, renders equal communion 
and reciprocal interchange impossible ? Is there 
not now among us a core of vital religion, a 
hidden Church waiting as a fruit-tree in spring 
will wait long, all set with blossom, for a day 
warm enough to blow in, a day when it will blow 
all at once ? " 




OMETIMES," said Philip, "calling 
many tendencies of our age to mind, 
I wonder whether, as regards spirit- 
ual science, our future may not be more synthet- 
ical than any past age has been ; will there not 
be less of analysis, of separation, — a greater 
disposition to look at things in their mutual re- 
lation ? The study of natural science is ever 
tending to form this habit of mind within us." 

" So much so," I said, " that even in art we 
can scarcely now be satisfied with that which 
does not, at least by implication, present us with 
something of the whole. Whatever is painted 
lovingly, whether broadly or minutely, does 
this. David Cox flings you down a page of 
nature in writing, scarcely legible from emotion ; 
rough, blurred lines bring before you the wet 



90 TWO FRIENDS. 

reaches of sand, the ever-widening moor, the 
darkening sky, the wind blowing where it list- 
eth, and make you feel as if you were among 
them, bound within the wings of sadness, 
beauty, and mystery, and carried you know not 
whither. So will one of W. Hunt's moss- 
grown, leafy, primrose-studded hedge-banks 
give you the breath and bloom of spring, the 
sense of the woods and fields, and of the broad 
open sky, within the compass of a few square 
inches. But there is a way of depicting nature 
and life, which, because we feel that it is not 
true to the whole, satisfies the understanding as 
little as it delights the heart; it takes feature 
by feature, and yet the picture is not like, be- 
cause the expression — that which belongs to the 
whole, and cannot he had without it — is not 
there. Thackeray, for instance, takes up some 
fair and cherished ideal of humanity, pulls it in 
pieces, and says, 6 You thought this was a lovely, 
breathing form ; you loved it, mourned over it, 
but see, it is a doll ; it never lived, its eyes are 
glass, I can show you the wires by which they 
open and shut. This withered flower that you 



TWO FRIENDS. 91 

have kept within your heart's book so long, 
that its leaves still open at the place where it is 
pressed, is not & flower ; it never drank in the 
dew, or spread its leaves in the sunshine. Your 
treasure is a thing of shreds and patches, held 
together by a little gum.' Yet life is still beau- 
tiful and beloved. Love and truth and con- 
stancy, all things the human heart believes in, 
remain ; and that heart is still greater than the 
things which do surround it, able, if fair and 
noble things were not, to create them out of its 
own wealth." 

" The whole," resumed Philip, " interprets 
to us the parts, more surely than the parts the 
whole, so that to judge of any great or good 
thing fairly we must have the whole before us, 
we must even presuppose it, in order to a just 
conception of the parts. To get a true idea of 
any character or system, we must seize, as Nean- 
der advises, upon its higher forming element ; 
I would even go further than he does, and say 
that we cannot understand the Actual of a char- 
acter or system without in some degree entering 
into its Ideal, that to which it naturally tends. 



92 TWO FRIENDS. 

For there is in all things an Ideal, a Divine 
principle, revealing itself in spite of contradic- 
tory elements, something which it would fain 
be, yet which it only can be in a sudden, transi- 
tory flash ; as an ordinary face will in some mo- 
ment of satisfied affection, of exalted feeling, be 
transfigured into beauty and nobleness. Who 
has not known moments when the whole of a 
friend's heart has been in his looks and voice ; 
moments in which a lifetime of goodness and 
affection has revealed itself, perhaps at the touch 
of some slight and apparently casual circum- 
stance? And I think it is for this that the 
general heart of humanity has been ever dis- 
posed to set such a seemingly disproportionate 
value upon sudden acts of self-sacrifice and 
heroic daring, deeds like those of the Chevalier 
d'Assas, — that though they occupy but a mo- 
ment, the whole of a life is in them. Moments 
of sudden emergency leave, it is true, no time 
for choice, for reflection, for much that makes 
an action morally great ; but they are like the 
lightning's flash across the spirit, bringing out 
its lineaments in clear and awful distinctness. 



TWO FRIENDS. 93 

Such deeds give us a great soul speaking in its 
unguarded sleep, showing us what it truly is. 
And the less exalted aspects of life have also at 
a lower level their consistency ; the whole tree 
is in its every leaf; the whole body, soul, and 
spirit of man is in some degree in his every 
action. When a person is known intimately, 
each of his movements and gestures bears a 
characteristic stamp ; even a garment he has 
worn becomes instinct with life and individu- 
ality ; it suggests the familiar face, it is filled out 
with the well-known form. This, we say, be- 
longs to him. So may God be discerned in Hu- 
manity, so may Christ be seen in his Church." 

" And yet," I said, " as regards this last 
great subject, how poor, insufficient, and there- 
fore practically inefficient, are our conceptions ! 
The Bible, as De Maistre says, clearly intimates 
that the Church is as necessary to Christ as he 
is to the Church ; it is emphatically the fulness 
of him who filleth all in all.* This wonderful 
saying shows us that unity is the end of all the 
Divine plans with regard to us. Even Christ is 

* Ephesians i. 23. 



94 TWO FRIENDS. 

only complete through the building up of his 
body, the Church : we are complete in him ; he 
is completed in us. His words are not only 
4 You in me,' but also, ' I in you ' : the Head of 
the great body says not to any one of his mem- 
bers, 4 1 have no need of thee.' The Epistles 
are full of references to the organic life of the 
Church ; the building ' up of this breathing 
house not made with hands ' is spoken of as a 
gradual work, — a work which moves alto- 
gether, if it moves at all; the whole body, St. 
Paul tells us, grows through that which every 
joint supplieth. They also testify to a common, 
a transferable spiritual property ; a bread some- 
times of affliction, sometimes of rejoicing, of 
which 4 all are partakers.' c If we be afflicted,' 
says St. Paul, 4 it is for your salvation which 
is wrought in the enduring of the same suffer- 
ings which we also suffer, or whether we be 
comforted, it is for your consolation and salva- 
tion.' 4 We also,' he says again, ' are weak in 
Christ, but we shall live by the power of God 
toward you.' He speaks further of individual 
poverty, which tends, and not indirectly, to 



TWO FRIENDS. 95 

the general wealth, 4 We are fools for Christ's 
sake, but ye are wise in Christ ; we are weak, 
but ye are strong ' ; and intimates that the 
prayers of 4 many helping together ' will bring 
upon Timothy and himself a blessing for which 
4 many' will return thanks. Nay, he does not 
even limit this reciprocal interchange, this mu- 
tual interest and help, to the members of the 
human family, whether militant on earth or 
rejoicing in heaven. How many of his deep 
sayings, such as Col. i. 20, Eph. i. 10, imply 
that the benefits of Christ's great sacrifice have 
a bearing beyond that family, such as bring it 
into relations with other and spiritual orders 
of existence. Who knows upon what worlds, 
what systems, Christian prayer and effort even 
now tells? It was not to men only that St. 
Paul's commission was addressed. He preached 
among them the unsearchable riches of Christ, 
to the intent that the manifold wisdom of God 
might be made known to principalities and 
powers in heavenly places through the Church 
which was thus founding. See Eph. iii. 10. 
' The fellowship of the mystery ' he there speaks 



96 TWO FRIENDS. 

of is a mystery of fellowship, one that fellowship 
only can admit us to." 

" You have quoted De Maistre," said Philip, 
thoughtfully ; " do not these expressions, at 
least in the sense in which you receive them, 
— and I do not see how they will bear any 
other, — come very near his favorite theory 
of reversibility?" 

" Not nearer," I returned, " than Baxter 
comes, when he speaks of his own times a truth 
that holds good of all : ' It is because we have 
so few high saints among us, that we have so 
many low r sinners,' and not nearer certainly 
than life itself comes. In the meanest thing of 
every day, no man liveth, no man dieth unto 
himself, so inwrapt and interfolded are human 
destinies in the continual action and reaction 
that goes on through life. And if it is thus 
with the outward course of things, dealing with 
what is material and secular, how much more so 
in that great unseen order where finer springs 
are touched to surer issues, the spiritual life of 
man ! The Christian is one who in work and 
life and prayer ' strengthens himself for the 



TWO FRIENDS. 97 

sake of many ; he belongs consciously to a king- 
dom in which there is nothing unrelated." 

" True," said Philip, " and a time comes to 
the soul when individualism becomes cramping, 
narrowing ; when we feel conscious that we 
cannot breathe and move freely either in work 
or prayer, except through the universal organic 
whole." 

" What," I resumed, " is Christianity itself, 
but living to the whole instead of living to the 
part ? It gives the heart Christ instead of self 
for its spring and centre ; it says unto it, c Be- 
hold the Man ' ; not Paul now, nor Apollos, 
not even Christ Jesus himself as a man ; if we 
have known him as such in a merely personal 
relation, we know him as such no more, but as 
the great High-Priest standing before God in 
the place of humanity, whose sins, whose griefs, 
and burdens, he has taken upon himself, first- 
born among many brethren. JEcce Homo ! the 
earliest impression I ever received of Christ was 
from a colored engraving, with these words be- 
neath it ; I remember distinctly the place where 
it used to hang ; the crown of thorns, the bleed- 
5 o 



98 TWO FRIENDS. 

ing forehead, the kind and sorrowful counte- 
nance. I remember, as a very little child, 
asking what the two Latin words meant ; how 
long have I been in learning their full mean- 
ing ! Protestantism has done much for the 
world by its consistent testimony to moral re- 
sponsibility, by its faithful education of the 
individual spirit ; but from the exclusive stress 
it lays upon w r hat is individual and interior, 
it bears but feeble witness to one organic spir- 
itual unity; to the fact that we, being many 
members, are one body in Christ. Roman 
Catholicism has loudly proclaimed this unity; 
it has been its lot to keep and to transmit a 
secret w r hich it has not apparently understood. 
It has testified that the human race, whether 
in Adam or in Christ, is one; but it has 
missed the contingent necessary truth, that be- 
cause we are one, because we possess organic 
life, that life will assume different manifesta- 
tions. All that lives grows, and grows after its 
own fashion; it is only that which is made, 
ready made, which can be reproduced a thou- 
sand times over, in any age or in any clime, in 



TWO FRIENDS. 99 

the order and pattern desired. This truth, 
Popery, waiting from age to age to devour 
the man-child of mental and spiritual freedom 
so soon as it should be born, has ignored, has 
trampled under foot, and even yet, wherever 
Popery continues in the ascendant there can be 
no harmonious development, no free, progressive 
life, none of that mutual help and enlighten- 
ment, each supplying what each needs, which is 
the soul and life-breath of Church fellowship. 
Stiff with its own infallibility, the Church of 
Rome sits before Christendom like the enchan- 
ter before the lady in Comus, ready to chain up 
its nerves in alabaster." 

" It is not hard, I think," said Philip, " to 
contemplate Catholicity apart from Popery." 

" And in that case," I continued, " not hard 
to see how Catholicity still holds to her heart 
this flower, the unity of man! Often has its 
fragrance, as that of a flower cast forth to perish, 
come across me in lonely and uncultured places, 
making the desert glad ; here only I find it 
planted in the garden of the Lord, and drawing 
round it, as thick as bees in summer, every ten- 



100 TWO FRIENDS. 

der and hopeful thought. There are in the 
world many kinds of voices, and none of them 
without signification ; wandering, wind-awak- 
ened tones seeming to die upon the air that calls 
them forth, — Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the 
sound of a trumpet and the voice of words. 
But what has it been to me to recognize this 
voice, dear in the poet's song, the patriot's vis- 
ion, — sweet even in its most bitter accents, 
wrung from the heart of some stern, solitary 
thinker grown desperate over this world's 
wrong ; what has it been to me to hear it speak- 
ing to us no longer in parables, but showing us 
plainly of the Father ? What but the awakening 
into a blissful dream ? The intellect has many 
illusions ; but the dreams of the heart come 
true, because the instinct of the heart is pro- 
phetic. Catholicity, or, in other words, apos- 
tolic Christianity, is the fulfilment of the heart's 
best dream ; it contemplates humanity as one, 
and as such aims at its restoration; as One 
fallen in Adam, as One redeemed in Christ ; it 
works ever towards the whole, its task is to 
bring back the One to the One, humanity to 



TWO FRIENDS. 101 

God. It looks also upon the individual man as 
one, a being spiritual, rational, and sensitive, 
and as such provides him with food convenient 
for him ; it gives us no manna of mere spiritu- 
ality, angels' food, thin and unsatisfying ; but 
sets before us bread, — the bread of which Christ 
said, ' It is my flesh, which I will give for the 
life of the world.' It does not throw the whole 
strain of spiritual life upon a moment, a feeling, 
a movement of the heart, of w T hich, at some 
other moment and under some other feeling, the 
heart itself may doubt ; it receives us while 
yet passive ; unconscious of either good or evil, 
it takes us up within its arms to bless us. It 
makes not upon the heart that continual, ex- 
haustive demand, ' Faith, faith,' but lays within 
it faith's deep foundation ; it declares of our 
spiritual Zion that this Man was born there, 
and proclaims that the Highest doth even now 
inhabit her ; it brings forth the headstone with 
shoutings of c Grace, grace.' " 

" Catholicity," said Philip, " is great in this, 
that while it leaves within it room and scope 
for the most ardent personal aspiration, for the 



102 TWO FRIENDS. 

closest individual union with Christ that the 
heart can claim, it does not leave the heart to it- 
self, to its own experiences, its own aspirations. 
It regards humanity as a field which the Lord 
hath blessed, as a soil where the good seed is al- 
ready sown, and needs but to be quickened and 
developed. It brings Christ into the foreground 
of spiritual life, and lets life root itself round his 
life. It lifts before the soul its great Object, 
that which alone can lift it up ; through rite, 
through creed, through symbol, it brings the 
human spirit into neighborhood with Christ, and 
lets it grow up gradually unto him." 

" Catholicity," I continued, " requires noth- 
ing from the individual but sincerity; its con- 
gregation, like that of the Israelites, are all holy 
de jure ; all, until reprobate and self-excluded, 
are citizens of no mean city. They have noth- 
ing to prove, nothing to keep up before men ; 
let but their light burn unto God, it may take 
care of its own shining. It is easy to see how 
different a position the individual holds in com- 
munities where the test of fellowship is inward, 
as among the Baptist and other of the stricter 



TWO FRIENDS. 103 

Protestant sects, where membership in Christ 
is not admitted until the individual has gone 
through a conscious spiritual change. There, 
even in the countenance, you can often trace 
a painful constraint and self-consciousness, as 
of persons committed to a standard of feeling 
which they may not be at all times equal to 
maintain. The spirit of man, we all know, 

1 Is competent to win 
Heights which it is not competent to keep.* " 

"The heart of man," said Philip, "is too 
weak to be forever self-regulating. Christ is 
to his Church what the sun is to the world, — 
its great universal clock, to which the whole 
system is so adapted, that a flower opens and 
shuts to the same law by which the heavenly 
bodies move. In Catholicity there is little of 
stimulus and pressure ; little to fear from those 
sharp collapses which are their inevitable result. 
It lifts the strain from self to Christ ; it is evi- 
dently made for man ; suited for him as he is 
now. But is there not also something beautiful 
in the Protestant ideal of a Church, striving 



104 TWO FRIENDS. 

as it does to antedate the time when God's 
people shall be all righteous ? Something in it, 
too, which answers to that deep-seated longing 
for inner purity, that desire after perfection, 
which must, as things are at present constituted, 
ever defeat itself, and yet ever form part of true 

Christian consciousness ? And what, after 

all," resumed Philip, thoughtfully, "is a sect 
but the recognition of a Church ? the effort to 
tighten the bonds which, in the great national 
churches, are apt to hang so loosely as to be 
scarcely felt ? There is something in Chris- 
tianity, if we examine its history closely, which 
always for its full development requires an inner 
circle, a church within the church. It has 
found this in the Sect, the Order; it finds it 
too, in many an English parish, in a humble, 
healthful, almost unsuspected shape, in the work 
which, under good organization, grows up nat- 
urally about the Church. I once lived 'in a 
large manufacturing village, where a numer- 
ously attended Sunday school became such a 
spiritual centre, and possessed all the attractive, 
binding energy I speak of; the more thought- 



TWO FRIENDS. 105 

ful persons of every class being drawn out as 
teachers, meeting the clergyman for prayer and 
reading of the Scriptures, with an especial refer- 
ence to the common work ; while these, in their 
turn, influenced the more seriously disposed 
young people, to whom the care of the very 
little ones was committed. I often recall these 
younger teachers, factory boys and girls, some 
of them even unable to read very fluently, yet 
most successful in the management of their 
infant classes. How attached they were to 
their little pupils, visiting them when sick, and 
taking them various small comforts ! How 
affectionate to their elder friends ! That was 
the only place," said Philip, smiling, "where I 
was ever serenaded ! My boys knew my fa- 
vorite hymns, and used to sing them under 
my window in summer evenings. All things 
seemed to unite us more closely, — the mirth 
of our yearly festivals ; the happy deaths of 
some among us ; even the sorrowful fallings 
away of some that at first did run well; the 
losses belonging to every great gain ; the dis- 
appointments inseparable from every real work : 

5* 



106 TWO FRIENDS. 

in all things we were as members, rejoicing and 

suffering together 

"Again, in large towns you will find an 
interest in the great Christian societies, such as 
those connected with foreign missions, or active 
local work among the destitute and fallen, work- 
ing the same effect in calling forth the more 
intimate spiritual affections. There is no such 
firm, such attaching bond, as that of prayer and 
a common work for Christ. A common work 
tends to a common life, fuller than the individual 
can ever live. How can one, being alone, be 
warm? Do you remember the almost secret 
associations established during the last century, 
a period of great license in the Nation, and of 
great coldness in the Church, 'for the refor- 
mation of manners ' ? — societies so humble in 
their scope, and so quiet in their action, that 
it is now difficult to gather any exact account 
of them. They are only to be traced back in 
the works which have followed them, not only 
discernible in 'sweeter manners, purer laws,' 
but in their direct historical connection with the 
great religious and missionary societies which 



TWO FRIENDS, 107 

now go through the length and breadth of our 
land. It is evident that our spiritual and our 
natural life are alike in this, that each needs, 
from time to time, to be refreshed, quickened, 
by something not within ourselves. We require 
the reciprocal action of heart upon heart, life 
calling forth life. Even in natural things there 
is no fulness except through participation ; and 
I myself have been long persuaded that we do 
not fully live unto Christ except through mutual 
communion. How significant is that saying of 
St. John's, ' If we walk in the light, as he is in 
the light, we have fellowship one with another ' ! 
And there is surely a mystery in our Saviour's 
words, 'Where two or three are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the midst 
of them.' The genius of the old Dispensation 
was individual, God speaking to the soul of 
patriarch and prophet, and receiving for answer, 
4 Here am IS The new Covenant knows little 
of solitary manifestations. When Jesus is to be 
transfigured, he taketh with him Peter and 
James and John ; when the Holy Spirit is to be 
given, the disciples are all assembled with one 
accord, in one place." 



108 TWO FRIENDS. 

As I looked at Philip, and saw how he 
warmed and almost grew with his great theme, 
I was reminded of the sermon some mediaeval 
divine preached upon it to the text, " Philip 
and Bartholomew," the last-named of these two 
disciples being never mentioned in Holy Writ 
except in connection with the former. 

" And there is yet another side," he contin- 
ued, " from which it is well to look at this sub- 
ject. In the frequent darkness and deadness 
of the human spirit, how strange, how power- 
fully re-enforcing is the influence of true com- 
munion ! You, I know, from some cheerfulness 
of my voice and aspect, find it hard to think of 
me but as strong and equal ; you do not easily 
believe that I, like yourself, am visited by 
moods in which earth seems desolate, and 
heaven even geographically a long way off, with 
all lines of communication broken. At such 
seasons how does one desire a gale, a lift; to be 
taken up like a little bird under the wing of a 
strong eagle, and brought nearer the sun ! But 
does it ever come to you to suffer under an 
anguish of unbelief, of a rational, or apparently 



TWO FRIENDS. 109 

rational, irresistible kind, when some dark, be- 
sieging thought, which the soul can neither 
answer nor dismiss, comes forward in a form so 
fixed and definite, that reason seems spell-bound 
before it ; and though the heart and spirit pro- 
test, it is so feebly as to appear almost like con- 
sent ? This state of mind is, I think, the hard- 
est of all to bear, because it is one which leaves 
the soul no place to flee unto ; it is hunted from 
one desolation to another. I shall never forget 
a day of this kind last summer ; a day out- 
wardly of golden warmth and sweetness; of 
quiet, too ; for I was staying in my old parish 
in the country. In the evening a few of my 
young men, Sunday scholars and pupil-teachers, 
w T ith whom, five years ago, I had spent many a 
happy, well-remembered hour, came in to see 
and welcome me. It was an effort to me, under 
such circumstances, to appear so glad to see 
them as I should naturally have felt ; a still 
greater effort to pass into any intercourse be- 
yond that of kindly chat and greetings ; yet I 
made it, and we had 'reading and talk and 
prayer together as of old. I cannot describe to 



110 TWO FRIENDS. 

you the effect this little hour of prayer and of 
true communion had upon me ; even like that 
of the bursting of a dark thunder-cloud, and it 
affected me in this way. I felt that Christ and 
the Holy Spirit, regeneration, and the blessed, 
glorious hopes that the Gospel holds out to us, 
are at any rate as real as the gulfs set between 
man and all that he seems made for, — sin, indif- 
ference, despair, — as real as all that had per- 
plexed me; these, too, are facts, historic, living 
facts, met and answered by the heart to which 
they are addressed, meeting our deep need. At 
that time I could not have prayed alone ; a wind 
from the desert, a dry, searching breath, would 
have swept my words ; I needed to pass out of 
my own soul, wasted and girt with fire, into the 
freedom of less harassed spirits. Seasons like 
these have made me think much on the subject 
of communion and its deep inward blessedness. 
To know, as I do, looking over the country at 
this moment, till my eye rests upon the remote 
edge of the horizon, that there is a poor man or 
woman living there who believes, and loves, and 
prays, makes me a happier, abler Christian. To 



TWO FRIENDS. Ill 

borrow an illustration from nature, do you 
know that ice cannot change to water, or water 
to steam, until the temperature of the whole 
has been raised to a certain level ? We cannot 
raise the temperature of a thawing mass of ice 
until we have thawed the whole ; until all the 
ice has passed into water, all the water into 
steam. Any heat short of the amount required 
to produce these changes becomes latent and 
disappears ; it is absorbed in producing these 
changes. How much Christian energy and 
love disappears, sinks below the surface, in this 
way, depressed by the low level of the sur- 
rounding atmosphere. 

" As the world is, the few earnest Christians 
scattered here and there in it, one in a family, 
a few in a city, are enough to keep the mass 
from freezing; but their life, we may say, is 
spent in keeping up their life : 

1 A flower that, bold and patient, thrusts its way- 
Through stony chinks, lives on from day to day, 
But little shows of fragrance or of bloom.' 

How sorely in social life will the want of gen- 
erous and exalted aims, the absence of lofty and 



112 TWO FRIENDS. 

kindly traditions, affect a whole community ! 
It is hard to be always in opposition ; even the 
nobler mind will in some degree succumb to 
what it continually meets, becoming, like the 
dyer's hand, c subdued to that it works in.' 
How different it is when heart is met by heart, 
and hand helped out by hand, as is sometimes, 
if too seldom, seen in a household that have 
among them but one heart and one mind, and 
that the mind which was in Christ Jesus ! A 
home wherein earthly affections, without losing 
their characteristic sweetness, have been made 
to bear the image of the heavenly ; where love 
between child and parent, between husband and 
wife, has been transfigured into a more perfect 
likeness ; where to brotherly kindness, a natural 
bond which is strong, but not always tender, has 
been ' added ' the spiritual tie of charity. What 
is there too hard for such a family to undertake 
and to accomplish ? " 

Philip took from his pocket-book a little 
prayer, which he had found, he told me, in a 
very old collection : — 



TWO FRIENDS. 113 

& 3Prager for prist's 2&fttstront. 

" i?i^ how unthankful I am, and sorrowless, Lord, thou 
knottiest, for my heart is not hid from thee. be merciful 
unto me, good Father, and grant me the Spirit of thy chil- 
dren, to reveal unto me my ignorance of thy kingdom, my 
poverty, and perversity, that I may lament the same, and 
daily labor for thy help and thy Holy Spirit to suppress the 
kingdom of sin in myself and others. Again, grant me that 
same, thy Holy Spirit, to reveal to me thy kingdom of power, 
grace, and glory ; to kindle mine affections towards it; to 
renew me more and more ; to reign in me as in a piece of 
thy kingdom ; to give me to desire, to pray, and to labor for 
thy kingdom, both to myself and others ; that the power, ex- 
cellence, and majesty of thy kingdom may be known among 



We were both long silent. Philip resumed : 
" Do you not think that the secret of the ex- 
traordinary hold of Methodism upon the English 
poor lies in the strict and intimate communion 
which forms so essential a part of it ? Before 
John Wesley commenced that great revival 
of spiritual religion which was blest to whole 
counties, towns, villages, and the fruits of which 
are still to be found, not only in many a remote 
and many a populous district in England, but 



114 TWO FRIENDS. 

in America, Sweden, and almost the whole of 
Protestant Christendom, he describes himself as 
having walked many miles to see and discourse 
. with ' a serious person,' who said to him, ' You 
must either find companions or make them ; 
there is no such thing as going to heaven 
alone.' Methodism is eminently social ; its idea 
is that of journeying Zionwards in companies, 
gathering as they go ; husbands, wives, friends, 
servants, little ones, 'leaving not a hoof be- 
hind ' ; its activities are ever aggressive, its 
sympathies ever widening ; 

4 Wp. weep for those who weep below, 
And burdened, for the afflicted sigh; 
The various forms of human woe 
Attract our softest sympathy. 1 " 

" True," I said, " I know no more singular 
contrast than to turn, as I have lately done, 
from Wesley's hymns to those of Augustus 
Toplady, in their way as fine as any in our 
language, but admitting us into a world in which 
there is God and the individual soul only ; no 
breath or whisper to tell of any other creature, 
the hymn goes up straight like a flame or dart ; 



TWO FRIENDS. 115 

it is Jacob's ladder into heaven without either 
man or angel ascending or descending the shin- 
ing stairs." 

u Have you seen," continued Philip, " a book 
called Ploughing and Sowing, by a lady deeply 
interested in the improvement of the boys and 
young men employed on the great farms in 
Yorkshire, a class hitherto neglected, and ex- 
posed to the peculiar evils which arise from 
close association, when, as under the Bothy sys- 
tem in Scotland, the humanizing influences of 
family life are withdrawn. She, the daughter of 
a clergyman, speaks of Methodism in the part 
of England she lives in — the East Riding of 
Yorkshire — as being a mitigated form of dis- 
sent, involving little feeling of separation from 
the Church, and no ill-will towards it. She 
says it is the only real religion of the working 
classes ; to be ' brought in ' and ' to join a 
society' is with them synonymous with true 
earnestness in religion, and the conversion of 
the soul to God. When you are told that such 
a one is ' religious,' you always find on inquiry 
that it means he has joined a society; a well- 



116 TWO FRIENDS. 

conducted person who has not done so will be 
spoken of as being ' very good for a worldly 
man.' A boy said to the writer, ' All the folks 
at our farm are religious except me, and I'm 
going to be so very soon.' The boys, influ- 
enced for good by this lady — herself a firm 
Churchwoman — seem, with little more than 
one exception, to become Wesley ans, as if it 
had been the natural fruit of her admonitions ; 
they give as one reason, ' You see, what with 
class-meetings, and prayer-meetings, and preach- 
ings, Wesleyans have so much more means* 
than Church people.' I know well how much 
is involved in this last statement, for I have 
so often, in talking to devout poor people, found 
that it was the need of a closer warmth of spir- 
itual sympathy, and this need only, that had 
drawn them from the Church to Methodism, or 
some other form of dissent. They will tell you 
that when they first became interested in spir- 
itual things, anxious inquirers after salvation, 
they found no one in the Church to whom 
they could open their hearts ; the clergyman 
* I. e. "means of grace." 



TWO FRIENDS. 117 

removed from familiar intercourse, fellow Church 
people of their own class indifferent and unen- 
lightened." 

" True," I said, " but how much, too, of the 
strength of Methodism is to be found in its 
directness. As Napoleon in his grand secret of 
battle would accumulate all his force upon one 
point in the enemy's ranks, instead of diffusing 
it from line to line in a series of desultory 
attacks, so does this teaching press home upon 
the soul the one point that it either is or is not 
turned to God, and urge it, if still reluctant and 
wavering, to take at once that self-renunciating, 
self-dedicatory step. Surely there is great, ines- 
timable gain in thus bringing a soul into a felt 
relation with its God, in making the first step 
in spiritual progress to consist in a real con- 
scious transaction between the soul and him ; 
and yet I know that in this very directness 
there may be danger ; the risk of recoil that 
follows upon extreme tension, the possibility of 
mistaking a spasm for a birth." 

" These are dangers," returned Philip, " in- 
herent in every system that makes conversion 



118 TWO FRIENDS. 

the beginning of life unto God ; they cease to 
exist when this great fact of spiritual experience 
is received, as in apostolical teaching, in its con- 
nection with other facts, when it is recognized as 
growing out of an already established relation 
between the soul and God." 

" You would then preach conversion," I said, 
"as being not the soul's birth, but its awakening ; 
you would set it forth as the turning-point in 
the direction of the soul's journey, — a turning, 
be it ever remembered, not always needed, for 
the great family of Christ should surely number 
with it many ' plants grown up in their youth,' 
requiring no violent transformation ; and yet 
to the great mass of professing Christians a 
needed change, a change of purpose and of 
affection worked by the Holy Spirit upon the 
human soul, a change of which it must in some 
degree be conscious." 

" Yes," resumed Philip, " as surely as it 
would be conscious of any earthly love, or hope, 
or joy. ' He that belie veth hath the witness in 
himself.' And here we touch upon another 
secret of the strength of Methodism, that it 



TWO FRIENDS. 119 

brings the great and comforting reality of pardon 
and acceptance, the love and peace and joy of 
believing, into far stronger relief than is usually 
done in Church teaching. When we consider 
the state of our lapsed masses, the great gulf 
their modes of life and thought have fixed 
between them and all methods of regular in- 
struction and gradual training, we learn to bless 
a teaching that applies such powerful stimulants, 
such strong consolations to the soul ; that rouses 
it from the deadly lethargy of sense and sin, 
and sends it out, perhaps, to weep in solitary 
places, to c wrestle,' as the poor Methodist ex- 
presses it, with its God ; that lifts it from the 
conflict into the clear sunshine of peace and 
hope and rejoicing; that leaves it at the feet 
of Jesus, saying, ' I have found him whom 
my soul loveth.' Sudden conversions, with the 
ecstatic warmth of feeling that follows upon 
them, are derided, but only by those who know, 
even as regards natural things, little of the 
secret powers, the reserved forces of the human 
spirit, and are unaware that in the depths of 
ignorant, and hardened, and weary, and disr 



120 TWO FRIENDS. 

tracted souls there is still a Strength, blind and 
fettered like that of Samson, needing a shock 
to set it free. ' The kingdom of heaven suffer- 
eth violence, and the violent take it by force.' 
Methodism has entered into the heart of this 
saying." 

" More deeply, you think, than the Church 
has done ? " 

" Far more deeply. And yet," continued 
Philip, " is not the Church, as all-inclusive, 
able to provide for all exceptional as well as 
for all ordinary wants ? Should any exigency, 
whether spiritual or social, whether of the age 
or of the individual spirit, find her unprepared 
to meet and minister unto it ? In the whole- 
ness of Catholicity she possesses each gift, each 
doctrine that, taken in isolation, makes, as it 
were, the peculiar treasure of the Separated 
Communions ; she possesses them, but in how 
many cases as treasure hid! her best things, as 
in careful households, being too often kept as 
things of state, rather than used as things of 
daily service and delight. What does she need, 
however, but, even like the scriptural house- 



TWO FRIENDS. 121 

holder, to bring forth out of her treasure things 
new and old ; what does she need but to take 
up from the heart her ancient, true confession, 
1 1 believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and 
Giver of life ' ? Has this third Divine Person 
been as yet worshipped and glorified among us 
together with the Father and the Son ? And yet 
where shall we meet with a more implicit avowal 
of dependence upon its Mighty Agency than is 
to be found in our liturgy ? Our collects have 
among them but one speech and language ; 
and this is the confession of natural weakness, 
joined with the reliance upon supernatural help. 
4 O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not 
able to please thee ; mercifully grant that thy 
Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule 
our hearts through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 
When I consider these inspired prayers, and 
remember how long they have been the life- 
breath of our National Church, I can but com- 
pare her with the Bride in Canticles, who said, 
4 1 sleep, but my heart waketh.' Her Lord, 
however, cometh that he may awake her out 
of sleep. We have long had Eldad and Medad 

6 



122 TWO FRIENDS. 

prophesying in the camp, fire has broken out 
in strange remote places, and all that we see 
within and without us leads us, with a writer 
of our day, to claim as the world's chiefest 
blessing a revival in the Catholic Church. Of 
this revival there are now many signs, and even 
if we still miss something of an inward spiritual 
glow, the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, 
the very statistics of our Church are cheering. 
She has lighted her candle, and begun to sweep 
her house diligently ; soon, perhaps, in a closer 
union with her Head, in a fuller communion 
with his earthly members, she may call in her 
friends and neighbors to rejoice with her." 

Philip was silent ; after a long pause I said : 
" Will not this revival, in becoming more defi- 
nite, take the form of a deepened appreciation 
of the blessings which the Church has held per- 
haps in a loose grasp, held out with a cold hand, 
but always held? These will become her gifts, 
her treasures, rightly divided, lovingly distrib- 
uted among her children, who will become 
aware of their true value through rational and 
spiritual recognition. I place these two words 



TWO FRIENDS. 123 

together advisedly, for it is the irrational which is 
above all else the unspiritual; we shall ever find 
that the least rational view, or in other words 
the most superstitious one, of any divine ordi- 
nance, is invariably the one which least helps to 
spirituality. As the mere formalist, who values 
form for its own sake, and would bind it where 
it does not grow, is the one person in the world 
who the least appreciates form's deep signifi- 
cance as being the result of an inner law, the 
expression which life naturally takes, so is it the 
person who looks to Baptism or to the Lord's 
Supper to save him, who blindly and ignorantly 
accepts the rites of Christianity as an end, the 
one who least of all enters into their inapprecia- 
ble value as means." 

" And as with its rites," said Philip, " so with 
its great institutions ; it is those who understand 
what a Church is, who are the least likely to 
rest in it, or in anything short of Him to whom 
it leads. And even so with the Priesthood ; 
I sometimes feel as if this Order, coexistent 
with Christianity itself, sometimes unduly ex- 
alted, sometimes unduly depressed, had yet to 



124 TWO FRIENDS. 

show forth its true beauty, and the general 
Church yet to learn its true value. How inter- 
esting is it in its connection with national and 
with family life ; it is impossible, even where 
this is made an express aim, to detach these 
bonds, — 

* As with the priest, so with, the people; 
As with the people, so with the priest.' 

Their standard of dignity, their level of purity, 
must be ever one ; the fire of the altar is always 
brought from the household hearth, the hearth 
kindled from the altar. ' It is from the earth 
itself that the salt of the earth is taken.' The 
name of priest has been desecrated till the very 
word, in some degree, carries with it the idea 
of something either spiritually despotic, or dryly 
ecclesiastical and official ; yet what word, what 
thought is in reality so tender as that of a Man, 
brought nearer than other men are, at once to man 
and to Grod ? When applied to our Lord him- 
self, no other of his offices seems to bring and 
to keep him beside us in so intimate and human 
a relation as that of his i unchangeable Priest- 
hood.' ' He is a Priest forever ' ; one separate 



TWO FRIENDS. 125 

from sinners and undefiled ; and yet, through 
this very separation, drawn into the closest 
union with Humanity. Christ, when on earth, 
was upbraided for his freedom and accessibility. 
* Behold this man receiveth sinners, and eateth 
with them ' ; and yet, like Joseph, the very 
type of bounty and brotherhood, he is one ' that 
is separated from his brethren,' drawing their 
souls after him, while he withdraws from their 
presence. The heart desires one who is greater, 
purer, kinder, freer than itself, one standing 
aloof from its conscious falseness, its self-con- 
fessed littleness ; therefore is Christ, because he 
is lifted up, able to draw all men unto him ; to 
draw as none other can do, close to Humanity, 
and to draw it close to him. And as with the 
Master, so with his true disciples ; there is 
ever something sacrificial in the Christian's life, 
something which will ofttimes compel him to 
4 put a space ' between his own soul and the 
souls upon which his desires and prayers are 
set ; he must free himself from every disturbing 
element, and be content to depart from his 
brethren in many things and at many seasons, 



126 TWO FRIENDS. 

so that he may abide with them forever in a 
truer, deeper fellowship than any which is 
founded upon the conditions of an earthly amity. 
Unsecularity is the strength and glory of the 
Christian Priesthood ; the Agency they deal 
with is one which, like that of some great 
mechanic force, must work apart from that on 
which it is brought to bear, — its power is lost 
in conformity, it lives in transformation, in re- 
newal ; it is content to die to its own individual 
hopes and interests, so that, falling within the 
wide field of Humanity, it may in dying bring 
forth much fruit. 




ET a little while longer, and Philip 
and I must part ; we saw before us 
the point at which our paths would 
break, never perhaps to be reunited, for the 
last command of One long loved and followed, 
" Go teach all nations," had ever been precious 
to Philip's spirit ; he was now about to obey 
its leading, and to go forth to fields of labor as 
yet unbroken, but scarcely more arduous than 
those in which he had toiled so long. " JEven 
unto this last " had been the motto of Philip's 
life ; he had chosen his portion among the 
things that all others reject, and in now devoting 
himself to the most wronged and most benighted 
among the nations, he did but follow out the 
sure and secret instinct which had ever drawn 
him towards the forlorn, the degraded, and the 



128 TWO FRIENDS. 

despised. He sailed for Africa in a few weeks. 
And now that the time of his departure drew 
nearer, it seemed that our hearts drew closer, 
so would the idea of that solemn, perhaps life- 
long parting, pervade and deepen all our inter- 
course, and cast a shadow round us, — a shadow 
like that green twilight of the summer woods, 
which is but the light grown tender. 

And the idea of that utter separation brought 
with it a strange feeling across my mind ; as 
if Philip were already severed from my life and 
all familiar things belonging to it, I seemed even 
now to view him apart from circumstance, apart 
from his bodily presence ; he was near to me, 
and yet afar, like one who has been long dead. 
Even while we talked together, my mind would 
sometimes detach itself from the subject we 
were engaged with, to occupy itself with him, 
till all that he was grew up before me in clear 
and denned outline. that I could but retain 
some one of these hasty gestures, some one 
of these sudden, unlooked-for turns of thought 
in which the deep sincerity of his nature was 
revealed, — that I could bring it back to me, 



TWO FRIENDS. 129 

and Philip with it, in days that were yet to 
come ! Yet it was doubtless expedient for me 
that he should go away, for man doth not live 
by bread alone, not even by that which best 
nourishes his heart and spirit, but by every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
And that word was now Farewell. We 
spent much of our remaining time together ; 
we spoke often of his future work, and even 
when we did not speak or consciously think of 
it, the idea of Africa — of its burning sky and 
sands, its strange and glowing forms of life, its 
vast undeveloped resources — of all that makes 
it a land of wonder and mystery — was so far 
present to us as to tinge our conversation with 
something of an unearthly, ideal character. 
How clearly I can recall those days, which 
were passed by the sea-shore, the sea which 
was so soon to part us ; how we would gaze 
upon it from the rocks, or still looking over it, 
lie for hours upon the grassy cliffs, and yet 
keep within our hearts a sense of the rich inland 
country that lay behind these green, desolate 
ridges, thick with farms, and villages, and little 

6* I 



130 TWO FRIENDS. 

peaceful towns. Even now, through a thin 
belt of wood in the distance, I could see the 
yellow, sword-like gleam of barley flashing in 
the sunshine, — for it was Autumn, and earth 
wore upon her breast the rich and russet gold 
that is more goodly than all she hides so deep 
within it. The very air was still and fruit- 
ful, it seemed to ripen our fancies upon it along 
with all that was now ripening, our words 
seemed to linger on it lightly, as the loosened 
leaves will linger and float awhile before their 
quiet, unmarked fall. Then we would let the 
broad ocean woo our thoughts into infinity; 
we sent them across it fearlessly, for all things 
seemed to beckon us onwards ; the line of silver 
that spread over the wide glittering bay, the 
white sea-birds that rose and fell with the 
waves, — even the dun sails of the fishing 
vessels, touched by the light of evening with 
a tawny splendor, seemed also to be winged 
messengers, coming to us we knew not whence, 
and taking us we cared not whither. 

" How the sea," I remarked, " seems to round 
a landscape, to finish it, and yet to make it illim- 



TWO FRIENDS. 131 

itable, just as our life is rounded by eternity. 
What strength and gladness too is there in its 
voice, something in its very awfulness which 
makes it facile and companionable. Its con- 
tinual movement without weariness, its flash, 
its smile, the ever-changing music of its monot- 
ony, — a monotony too vast to be oppressive, — 
always gives me a feeling intimately connected 
with that of our future life, so that it seems 
strange to me to read in Scripture that * there 
shall be no more sea.' " 

" It is hard," answered Philip, " to imagine 
that there will be anything left out of our 
future life which is beautiful and good in this 
one. Once I was easily satisfied with the idea 
of heaven ; I asked for nothing more than to 
be there; now I have grown solicitous about the 
nature of our happiness. How strange it is," 
he continued, " that there should be in some 
lives this order, first that which is spiritual, and 
then that which is natural. Yet so it has been 
with mine, and thus, judging from w T hat has at 
various times fallen from you, with your own 
also. I feel now no longer able to contemplate 



132 TWO FRIENDS. 

life under the strict and absolute aspect under 
which it once appeared to me, as being a 
place of discipline, a training-ground for spirit- 
ual perfection, a way, in short, to a higher and 
more complete life. Now I can see grandeur, 
beauty, even divinity, in things that do not 
minister to any of these objects, — that even 
appear to lead in far opposite directions ; great- 
ness, even Pagan greatness, irresistibly attracts 
my spirit, and at times I feel my soul drawn out 
of itself with a love that is almost passion for 
universal truth and beauty, i those things which 
are eternal because they are.' When such 
moods as these are upon me, I sometimes won- 
der if heaven will be the resurrection of our 
life, of our whole life, if it will be the bloom- 
time and expansion, not only of our spiritual 
being, but of all those germs of natural delight 
which seem unable to unfold here. How much 
is there in life to which life is itself unfriendly ! 
How much that must fall off, wither, perish; 
how many first loves of the heart and soul and 
spirit, whose destiny is written in their beauty, 
they are fated to die young. Yet how fair and 



TWO FRIENDS. 133 

exalted a thing, under its happier conditions, 
is natural life ! in its illusions, which are but 
truths anticipated in the clear second-sight of 
the soul ; in its elations, when the heart dilates 
and lifts up the whole of life along with it ! 
I discern in the human heart an innate love of 
splendor and distinction, showing itself in or- 
dinary life, in what is vulgar and ostentatious, 
yet in truth, I think, connected with our higher 
nature, in fact, a reminiscence of it, such as 
a high-born child, stolen from his home in 
youth, might feel awakening within him at 
the sight of grandeur. 

4 The poorest man 
Is in the poorest thing superfluous ' ; 

human nature always appears, as Shakespeare 
observes, to claim something beyond what it 
positively needs ; how readily will it, even un- 
der its most depressed conditions, respond to 
the call of what is gay and festal; how will- 
ingly will it let its hidden poetry bloom, if it 
be but for half a day ! Our very Sunday- 
school festivals would not be what they are 
to us but for the bright flags and banners 



134 TWO FRIENDS. 

waving above our little procession, our music, 
our triumphal arches, our wreaths and pictures 
on the walls of the school-room. You know," 
continued Philip, " what my daily life is ; how 
little there is in it to minister to the instinct 
I am now speaking of; yet it is strange how 
my dreams will carry me among scenes of more 
than earthly loveliness ; how all within me, 
which possibly the day represses, seems to cul- 
minate in some vision of enchantment. Yet 
it is no cold, metallic heaven to which the 
gate of sleep admits me, no steely splendor, 
no glittering, wearying glory, no ' Jerusalem 
the golden,' as so many of our hymns describe 
it, making both the eyes and heart ache ; all 
that I find there is tender, human, satisfying ; 
its very light, clothing all things with splen- 
dor, comes warm and rose-flushed through the 
heart." 

Philip paused, and resumed abruptly: "I 
should like to tell you one of these dreams, 
though to do so will be like drawing out one 
of these delicate films of sea-weed from the 
pool, where it is spreading in such beauty, — all 



TWO FRIENDS. 135 

the glow and lustre will fade when it leaves 
the water, — even so with my dream while I 
try to put it into words; 

' What marks hath blessedness ; 
What characters whereby it may be told ? ' 

I do not remember the beginning of my dream, 
or how I came to find myself in a smooth, 
grassy opening in the very depths of a forest ; 
the thick wood stood round it in unbroken 
masses, and made a wall of verdure, that gave 
a feeling of security without the sense of gloom, 
so wide was the clearing, so broad the sunshine 
of the summer noonday that seemed to concen- 
trate its light upon it; yet it was light with- 
out glare, a calm, steadfast light, like that of 
a loving eye, too friendly to confuse or dazzle. 
I seemed to be seated at a table, round which 
men of noble, even princely bearing were gath- 
ered in deep conference, in which I myself was 
a sharer, with One of middle age and majestic 
aspect, who seemed to be their leader : in their 
dress and language was a trace of something 
that severed them from our present times, and 
yet I knew not to what age of the world to 



136 TWO FRIENDS. 

refer it. At a little distance from the table 
a boy richly dressed sang to the lute, in tones 
so clear and ringing, that while I slept both 
the music and the words seemed visible to me, 
such ravishment did they pour within my soul. 
The table was spread for a banquet, heaped 
with costly plate, and fruits, and wine ; all 
showed splendor and profusion, and around 
it was boundless hilarity, chastened, I thought, 
but not checked by the presence of some Lofty 
aim, some common ground of hope and joy 
and triumph, that shed I know not what moral 
chami over the whole scene. Each brow I 
looked on was as open as the sunshine that 
streamed above us ; eye met eye, and heart 
answered heart. Then the scene changed, and 
I was wandering amid the deep glades of the 
forest, in the warm stillness of the afternoon. 
As I strayed onwards I met scattered parties 
of children, searching for flowers and berries ; 
they put their little hands within mine, they 
drew me down beside them on the grassy path 
to tell me some secret all important to their 
childish hearts, and in the telling they put 



TWO FRIENDS. 137 

their arms about my neck and kissed me, with 
the kisses of the soul, closer than anything can 
ever come on earth. A little farther on I met 
bands of youths and maidens, crowned with 
flowers, and singing as they descended a steep, 
rocky path that led into the deep and now dark- 
ening ravines of the forest. They, too, greeted 
me as one who had been long known, yet in 
their greeting, I thought, was less of recog- 
nition than of affinity, close and intimate as 
had been the kisses of the children. I wan- 
dered with them towards a castle, now shining 
in the last evening glow. O, how rich was 
that sunset, purple and a clear amber, that 
strove long for the mastery, and at last fused 
in a divided victory. It had grown dusk when 
I reached the castle ; my bright companions 
had vanished, but I heard their distant voices ; 
and still far, far away, that of the singer sing- 
ing to his lute. Now, methought, I walked 
in the sober tw T ilight with one who has been 
ever most dear to me, but from whom the 
pressure of life has long parted me ; life that 
can sever hearts far more utterly than death. 



138 TWO FRIENDS. 

We paced together up and down a mossy 
terrace ; we spoke of many things, both of 
trifling and of serious interest, as friends do 
who meet after the separation of a day. I did 
not forget the circumstances that had seemed 
to estrange us, but they seemed scarcely worth 
alluding to ; we were now reunited, all was 
accounted for, all was natural and right. I 
awoke in a sort of rapture, my spirit bathed 
in a conscious fulness of rest and satisfaction 
such as not even my dream had given ; a state 
described by the prophet when he says, 'After 
this, I awoke and beheld, and lo ! my sleep 
was sweet unto me.' Slowly I awoke out of 
this also into the gray November morning — " 

" And mourned, I suppose, to find it was 
but a dream ? " 

" No," returned Philip, his color heighten- 
ing; "you will wonder when I tell you the 
thought that crept over me with that blank, 
chill dawn; bitterness was in my soul, and 
along with it a sort of contempt for the Life 
hereafter; not even there, I thought, shall I 
behold such beings, noble, beautiful, and lov- 



TWO FRIENDS. 139 

ing as these that sleep has brought around 
me. O, how dim and colorless, how tame 
and uniform, did the Christian heaven at that 
moment seem ! " 

"But why," I said, "should heaven seem 
so?" 

"Why, indeed," returned Philip, laughing; 
"I only say that it did seem so." 

" Perhaps," I answered, "because you were 
thinking of it as it appeared to the ancient 
world. The blank, shadowy existence before 
which Achilles and Iphigenia preferred life, 
even were it that of a slave c toiling among 
men beneath the cheerful light of the sun,' — 
the Sheol, of which Job said, ' I shall rest 
in desolate places, among kings and counsellors 
of old.' You were thinking, as they did, of 
the second life of the soul only, — a thought 
that lays a heavier weight upon the spirit than 
even that of annihilation. How much has the 
human heart gained in the One revelation, 
which enables it to say, ' I believe in the res- 
urrection of the body ' ; that gives the flesh 
also leave ' to rest in hope ' ! It is this belief 



140 TWO FRIENDS. 

which brings with it all that is actual and per- 
sonal into our future life ; all, too, that is home- 
ly and familiar ; that gives us back our friends, 
looking and talking as they did here; gives 
us back our feelings and occupations, in fact, 
our lives. For the body is, after all, the home 
of the soul, endeared, even like the actual 
home, by the very sorrows that have been 
endured within it; and we can conceive of 
nothing entered upon in separation from it 
that is worthy to be called life. When I think 
of death, it is never as setting the soul free 
from the body, but rather as admitting it into 
a state where these two, in the marriage of 
the purified soul with the glorified body, will 
leam the true blessedness of their union, all 
being removed that has sometimes made it 
irksome and constraining. 

"And thus it has not been in seasons of 
w T eariness and despondency that the thought 
of death has been the sweetest to me; but 
at times, when my whole nature has been the 
most keenly strung to enjoyment, there has 
come within my soul a longing, an aching wish 



TWO FBIENDS. 141 

to be more in the heart of the beauty which 
encompasses but does not touch it; a desire 
4 not to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mor- 
tality may be swallowed up in life.' Do you 
know anything of that feeling of sadness and 
disquietude peculiar to the depth of summer; 
something which will not let the heart rest 
in the midst of the fulness and stillness that 
surrounds it, but weighs it down with a sense 
of strain and oppression, as if it were hard 
for it to respond to the fall and joyful note 
which nature then strikes ? It is not only the 
renewed spirit that reaches out after something 
far better than is here to be attained ; there 
is a fulness of natural as well as of spiritual 
joy not yet wholly given. We have nothing 
to draw with, yet the well is deep, and man's 
heart and his flesh cry out for the living God : 
they claim the resurrection you speak of; they 
ask to see life, the whole of life bloom, as a 
flower, according to the fancy of the old al- 
chemists, might be revived from its ashes. 

" And is it not some instinct of this resur- 
rection that lends such an intimate charm to 



142 TWO FRIENDS. 

all that gives oneness to life ? There is noth- 
ing in our nature more religious than that 
which binds life consciously together, the power 
of Association ; the full strength and sweetness 
of its deep conservatism can be only known, 
I think, to pure lives, whose very ghosts are 
comfortable, to loving spirits that have been 
faithful to the treasure committed to them, even 
if it be but to the ' few things ' of their earli- 
est days. Also, I think its power is best felt 
in lives that have been so far happy that they 
have known no violent wrench or dislocation, 
no blight, leaving some wide space unfruitful 
for the after harvest, so that the wealthy soul, 
4 enriched unto bountifulness,' may bring forth 
out of its treasure things new and old. Life 
is one; therefore it is well that childhood and 
youth should be happy ; every life should be- 
gin in Eden ; should have its blest traditions 
to return to, its holy places on which an eter- 
nal consecration rests. The dew of the birth 
of each most hallowed, most human thought 
and impulse within us is of the womb of the 
morning, and there is surely a literal meaning 



TWO FRIENDS. 143 

in our Saviour's words, 4 Unless ye become like 
little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom 
of heaven.' The moments that set its doors 
widest open show us this ; at times, when the 
great unseen world is nearest to us, the thought 
of childhood will return, and at the sound of 
the everlasting ocean, we stoop down to pick 
up the shells we used then to play with. When 
a great happiness floods our life, and lifts it 
far above its accustomed level, it sets it down 
upon no peak or summit of ecstasy, but brings 
us upon its wave some childish, trivial joy, 
some fondly recollected pleasure; it fills the 
heart with the sunshine of some long, golden 
afternoon of holiday, or with the fireside warmth 
of some long-deserted parlor. Do you re- 
member how Joan of Arc, when crowned at 
Rheims, sees the kind, homely faces of her 
sisters in the crowd, and is at once carried 
back to the green valley, the silent mountain, 
the free simplicity of her early days ? All 
that she has attained since then seems dream 
and shadow. ' The evening and the morn- 
ing make our day.' " 



144 TWO FRIENDS. 

" The homeliest associations," said Philip, 
" are ever those that have in them the most 
of tenderness. No passage in Holy Scripture 
has ever seemed to me more affecting than 
those words used by the Evangelist in de- 
scribing our Saviour's garments at the Trans- 
figuration : c Whiter than any fuller on earth can 
whiten? The simplicity of the allusion seems 
to bring that majestic, unearthly scene, with 
all its overwhelming associations, into unity 
with our daily life ; it knits and weaves to- 
gether the every-day and the everlasting, and 
bids us 

'Live 
In reconcilement with our stinted powers, 

and seek 
For present good in life's familiar face, 
And build thereon our hopes of good to come.' 

" How often have I felt a sacred power in 
the common things of life ! They set a limit 
to thoughts that are too vast and oppressive 
for our mortal .nature, and tend, in some way 
which I cannot analyze, to connect our per- 
sonal identity with the eternal existence of 
God. I have known moments when they 



TWO FRIENDS. 145 

have become sacramental to me; when they 
have seemed to bring God before me as a 
tender parent, whose mercies are over all his 
works. How often is he made known to us 
in the breaking of bread ; revealed through 
some slight circumstance ; made manifest un- 
der some familiar aspect ! I remember, last 
year, when I was recovering from a fever, 
lying one evening between sleeping and wak- 
ing, too weak and restless to command my 
thoughts, which drifted out far beyond every 
known boundary into that dark, confused, dif- 
fused idea of God, in which he is at once 
everywhere and nowhere. Gently, gradually, 
I was drawn back by the low tones of my 
mother and sister pleasantly talking over some 
little household incidents in the fire-light ; their 
gentle, subdued voices seemed to change the 
world from the void and chaos of nature into 
my Father's house; they led my spirit into 
His Presence who rejoices in the habitable 
parts of the earth, and makes his delight in 
the sons of men. 

" And how friendly," he continued, " to our 
7 j 



146 TWO FRIENDS. 

higher nature are all things that are simple, 
kindly, homely, as opposed to such as are fac- 
titious and conventional. Artificial tastes and 
pleasures can never either cheer or refresh the 
heart ; they have no root within our true life ; 
they are not of the Father, but of the world. 
How sweet and wholesome are the pleasures 
that go into small room ; the humble, simple, 
accustomed sights and sounds that bring the 
soul at once into the open air. Some of 
these are at all times full of deep suggestions, 
of quiet, unspoken recognitions, filling the heart 
with unspeakable tranquillity and peace. All 
that has to do with rural occupations, — hay- 
making and harvesting, the cheerful bustle and 
cackle of a farm-yard, the breath of cows, the 
broad, slanting light of evening, the wide glit- 
ter of a meadow in an autumn morning, and 
neither last nor least, the aspect of a cottage 
kitchen in the afternoon, with 'all things in 
order stored,' — these things fill me with a sense 
of the Fatherhood of God — " 

" Such," I said, " as you would gain from 
some passage in the New Testament, where 



TWO FRIENDS. 147 

Christ makes himself a partaker of flesh and 
blood, through his gracious condescension to the 
humble requirements, the lowly solaces our na- 
ture claims ; as when at the wedding-feast he 
turns the water into wine, and stoops down at 
the last supper to wash the feet of his disciples." 
"And yet," returned Philip, musingly, "is 
Christ indeed a friend to the region we have 
been speaking of, — a friend, I mean, who shows 
himself friendly ? Sometimes it seems to me as 
if he would at the last be generous to all that 
is in itself excellent ; that he will yet stoop 
down and recognize some of the fair and fading 
flowers of humanity that he now passes by 
without a glance ; that he will breathe upon 
them and bid them be ever-blooming. Yet the 
silence of the New Testament is a wonderful 
thing. Love, except of a spiritual kind, is 
never mentioned there. Outward nature, of 
which the Old Testament is so full, scarcely 
brought in, even as the background of the 
scene filled up with man's deeper and immor- 
tal destinies. Where in these pages is the 
world, — the world that goes on around us, 



148 TWO FRIENDS. 

and we along with it ; the world of feeling, of 
endeavor, of hope, of wearying care and bitter 
anguish ; ' this world, troublesome and yet be- 
loved,' that we do not, cannot escape from until 
we have done with it forever ? And when I 
think upon these things," he added, " an oblique 
light seems cast upon what has long seemed 
strangely certain to me, that Christianity should 
tend not only, as you say, to separation, but 
also to narrowness. It is easy to be wise upon 
the mistakes of religious people, to say that 
they miss the broad and loving character of the 
Gospel, straitening it to their own minds ; but 
it is not so easy to account for some constantly 
reappearing signs of a limited mode of viewing 
nature and life, such as over-strictness in the 
education of the young, and a strained disap- 
proval of amusement, so evidently a part of 
man, that it may, under its more favorable 
conditions, be literally termed his rg-creation. 
Nor is it yet easy to account for what it would 
be vain to deny, that, looking at things on a 
broader scale, the spiritual basis has ever proved 
too weak to bear up the whole man. How 



TWO FRIENDS. 149 

narrow, how little human, has been in all ages 
the merely religious world ! And how largely 
has that very world benefited by movements 
exterior, and even antagonistic to it ; as when 
the revival of the Greek and Latin literature 
brought a fresh breath over Christendom. 
Mere spirituality seems to exhaust the soil that 
rears it, so that Christianity must always gain 
much from extraneous sources. It does so, in 
our own day, from science and general social 
progress. These are its friends, though some- 
times disguised ones; and Christ still gathers 
where he did not straw, and reaps where he 
did not sow." 

" But are you so sure," I said, " that Christ 
has not strawed and sown in these very fields ? 
Christ is the light of the world as well as the 
light of his Church. He is a Man, One to 
whom nothing that Humanity endures or 
achieves can be alien, so that it seems less 
strange to me that some of the greatest con- 
quests of the truth should have been won for 
the Church and not by it, — that so many rich 
acquisitions, take, for instance, that of religious 



150 TWO FRIENDS. 

toleration, should have fallen into it through 
the gradual progress of human enlightenment. 
The Church and the world must grow to- 
gether, — they do grow together, though they 
cannot as yet grow in harmony ; suffering 
from the world's enmity, suffering still more 
from its friendship, straitened on all sides, the 
Church has become straitened in herself, timid 
and distrustful, as that which is in antagonism 
must ever be. In all that concerns Christianity 
under its present dispensation, we must be pre- 
pared to meet with a certain degree of check 
and disappointment. We find it even in Christ 
himself ; he will now be loved for his own sake, 
be followed in his silence and severity ; he will 
still give a present contradiction to many of 
the heart's most fair and cherished ideals, just 
as his earthly coming in poverty and humilia- 
tion contradicted the Jewish idea of the Mes- 
sianic world-dominion, yet this was a true idea, 
and one which Christ will yet abundantly fulfil. 
And if the Christ of the New Testament does 
not, as you say, meet and satisfy all the demands 
of our nature, — if it does not answer to the 



TWO FRIENDS. 151 

whole man, is it not because it does not give 
us the whole Christ ? Where in the four Gos- 
pels shall we find the Messiah, full of glory, 
majesty, and terror, red in his apparel, travel- 
ling in the greatness of his strength, the King 
of righteousness and peace, the Lord and Giver 
of earthly fulness and felicity, binding his foal 
to the vine and his ass's colt to the choice vine ? 
Are we not slow to receive all that the Psalms 
and the prophets have spoken concerning Him ? 
Wolff, if you remember, says that the error of 
the Jews of old did not He, as we often deem, 
in looking to Christ as the founder of a tem- 
poral kingdom, but in failing to recognize him 
under the humiliation which was foretold as to 
precede its establishment. For this want of 
recognition our Lord himself rebukes his disci- 
ples, when he says to them, ; Ought not Christ 
to have suffered these things, and then to have 
entered into his glory ? ' And as regards 
present times, Wolff tells us that he was never 
able to make any way in argument with his 
own people until he freely admitted to them that 
the Messiah had yet to come. ' At what time,' 



152 TWO FRIENDS. 

they would ask, ' has the Christian Church seen 
the fulfilment of prophecies such as those of 
the 11th of Isaiah and the 72d Psalm ? ' " 

" True," said Philip, " there is nothing his- 
torical in these passages of Scripture, nor yet 
in that remarkable series of Psalms, beginning 
at the 95th, which have been, with the 100th, 
in which they culminate, considered as form- 
ing one grand prophetic poem, celebrating the 
majesty and righteousness of Christ's kingdom 
on earth. Their cry is still, 4 He cometh^ he 
cometh to judge the world in righteousness, and 
the people with his truth.' " 

" And with Christ's second coming," I said, 
" as the Restorer of all things, is evidently 
linked the conversion and restitution of the 
Jewish people ; c when the Lord shall build up 
Zion, he shall appear in his glory.' This con- 
nection is brought out so clearly in the Old 
Testament, that it seems strange that Christians 
can continually read it, and still persist in tak- 
ing the magnificent promises, of which Isaiah, 
Zechariah, and all the lesser prophets are so 
full, in their spiritual regenerative aspect only^ 



TWO FRIENDS. 153 

when their plain literal meaning is one which 
does not drop off like a husk at the unfolding 
of their spiritual import, but expands along 
with it, growing like a double fruit upon the 
same stalk, so that neither can ripen fully until 
both do. Christ is to be a Light to lighten the 
Gentiles, and to be the glory of his people 
Israel ; the same Hour (so speaks prophetic 
testimony) that brings in Israel's conversion, 
will bring in man's full reconciliation with God. 
The veil which overspreads all nations rests as 
yet upon the eyes of Israel, and upon the heart 
of the Gentile Church, 'yet in this mountain, 
in Zion,' saith God, ' it shall be taken away ' ; 
a promise initially fulfilled in the day of Pente- 
cost, but to receive a yet fuller accomplishment 
in the Day when God returns to Jerusalem 
with mercies. That day will be one of rich 
ingathering. ' Great,' saith the Prophet Hosea, 
4 shall be the day of Jezreel ' ; Jezreel, a name 
combining terror with mercy, meaning at once 
4 1 will scatter ' and ' I will sow.' God will 
sow by them whom he has scattered ; and it is 
certain that the Jews will be in an eminent 

7* 



154 TWO FRIENDS. 

degree the Evangelists of the Second Dispensa- 
tion, as they were of the First." 

" It is an office," said Philip, " for which 
they will be in many ways peculiarly fitted. 
Called into the vineyard at the Eleventh Hour, 
they have not, like the Christian Church, borne 
the long day's heat and burden ; nor will 
they have, like it, a time-engendered acrimony, 
caused by the sharp separation of opinion, to 
contend with. Do you remember the passage 
in Wolff's Autobiography, where he tells us of 
his going up Mount Sinai to pray for the whole 
Church of God ; for the noble Stolberg and the 
other Roman Catholic friends of his early life, 
endeared through so many kindly associations ; 
for Mr. Drummond and all his beloved Eng- 
lish friends and fellow-helpers in the work of 
Christ ; and for his own people, those kinsfolk, 
4 to whom pertaineth the promises, whose are the 
fathers, and of whom concerning the flesh 
Christ came ' ? God hath not cast away his 
people whom he foreknew ; their faith, when 
it is once enlightened to receive Christ, will 
have a character of its own ; it will be child- 



TWO FRIENDS. 155 

like, implicit, and objective. It must be easy, 
I think, and natural for a Jew to look to God 
as a father; all their ancient ideas of him, 
whether of severity or love, are fatherly; he 
is even ' the Father of the dew ' : one who 
takes all creation under his individual superin- 
tendence. So that to them, in a peculiar man- 
ner, belong the fruition of all those rich earthly 
and yet evangelic promises, into which the 
Christian Church, baptized into the death of 
her beloved Lord, and cradled in suffering and 
strife, has as yet scarcely entered. It must 
wait for the companionship of the reconciled 
Elder Brother, then there will be dancing and 
music ; 6 music in the heart, music in the 
house,' — in the whole great united house- 
hold." 

" The Messianic promises," I said, " are in- 
deed earthly ; they are of the earth, as the rose 
and the lily are, and yet not ' earthy ' ; there is 
no grave-damp about them, no odor of corrupti- 
bility. What picture can be conceived by the 
human imagination more lovely than that scene 
portrayed in the eighth chapter of Zechariah, 



156 TWO FRIENDS. 

where all the finer affections of our nature find 
room and time for expansion, where the heart 
enjoys its long-desolated Sabbaths ! Here, the 
ground gives her increase, and the heavens 
their dew ; 4 in the streets of Jerusalem old men 
and old women dwell, and every man with his 
staff in his hand for very age ' ; while the same 
streets are ' full of boys and girls playing ' ; and 
the still remembered fasts of the Old Covenant 
are ' turned into joy and gladness, and cheerful 
feasts.' And we must not fail to remark, that 
this period of unexampled temporal felicity is 
also one of extraordinary * spiritual illumination, 
a time of prayer, of intercession, of holy activity ; 
a time when God dwells in the midst of his 
people; a time of intimate correspondence be- 
tween earth and heaven. When God says in 
Hosea, ' I will hear the heavens, and they shall 
hear the earth,' he says also, 4 And the earth 
shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oiV It 
is easy to decry the literal interpretation of 
prophecy as carnal and limited; easy to ask, 
what better shall we be for hills of corn and 

* Zechariah viii. 19, seq. 



TWO FRIENDS. 157 

barley, and for mountains dropping sweet wine ? 
but who can look into the world as it now is, 
without admitting how true, how heaven-sent a 
blessing material abundance would be, were 
that within man which is inimical to its true 
enjoyment once taken away ? It is only human 
selfishness that makes good things evil to us ; 
the richest boon the Father can send carries no 
sorrow with it to hearts that are prepared to 
share it as brethren. Even as we live and feel 
now, ' comfort,' which is too often a selfish and 
hardening thing, may become an evangelic one. 
The spirit of the world is one which makes a 
great feast, and invites many to it, but gives no 
kiss to the individual guest, — does not anoint 
his head with oil, brings him no water for his 
feet; but do you not know houses where a 
refined attention to bodily comfort seems but 
the expression of an inward cordiality, — houses 
where a sort of physical bien-etre prevails, where 
a genial soul makes its presence felt like that of 
the summer sunshine, or the winter hearth, so 
that your very food seems to do you more good 
than it does elsewhere? In the late accounts 



158 TWO FEIEXDS. 

of the work of the Bible-women in London, the 
poor women who are sometimes invited to pass 
an evening at the Mission-room seem to derive 
as much benefit from the kind looks and gentle 
voices of the ladies, from the good tea, the good 
fire, the flowers set upon the table, the unaccus- 
tomed luxury of a quiet room, as from anything 
they gain in the way of direct instruction. In 
all these things there is a tenderness that goes 
to the very soul." 

w% Yes," said Philip, "and that does not de- 
part from it quickly. There are some whom I 
have known on earth, who are now departed 
from it, that I find it difficult to think of, even 
in heaven, under any other aspect than that 
of ministering, welcoming, making every one 
around them comfortable, though I know not 
what form their tender, ever active solicitude 
may take where there are none weary, or sick, 
or sorrowful, where there are no strangers to be 
entertained, no wayfarers to be cheered and 
comforted." 

Philip was silent ; at this moment a sudden 
smile came out over the sky and sea, that 



TWO FRIENDS. 159 

seemed like an answer to our unspoken thoughts. 
O, what did it not recall; what did it not 
promise ! The glory of the terrestrial and of 
the celestial in one ! Memory and Hope, that 
met and kissed each other in the thought of 
partings that had been rich in a heavenly fore- 
taste, in the anticipation of meetings that would 
be more tender than even the partings of earth ! 

" There was no cloud, no flaming bar, no line 
Of fire along the west, but solemnly 
Heaven glowed unto its depths, as if the curse 
Were lifted upwards from our universe 
One moment's Sabbath space, and only love 
Stooped down above its world ! — so from above 
A smile dropt visibly on earth, that prest 
To meet that sign of reconcilement, blest 
On brow and bosom, blest." 

Philip was the first to speak. " How Na- 
ture can sometimes hide her deep, original 
wound ! Where, at such a moment as this, 
is the faint undergroaning of creation ? " 

" Yet surely," I said, " it is in such moments 
as these that the heart puts in its strongest 
claim for the promised restitution of all things. 
When Nature hides her wound, she does but 



160 TWO FRIENDS. 

hide it, and of this the soul is conscious. When 
her smile is the kindest, the heart feels that 
she can but smile ; she has no healing balm 
to pour, no life-giving Word to speak. She 
has, it is true, a ministry for man, but in it 
there is nothing priestly, no layer of regener- 
ating purity, no chrism of absolving love. Her 
house is the house of bondage, out of which 
she can never lead man's spirit, for Nature 
herself needs to be redeemed. Science has taught 
us that discord was not introduced into crea- 
tion by man, nor did it follow, as it is usual 
to suppose, in consequence of his disobedience ; 
the revelations of geology prove abundantly 
that pain and death reigned from the begin- 
ning, therefore is it that the Cross must go so 
deep. Christ must subdue this kingdom also, 
must deliver it up to God,* even to the Father, 
and until then Christ's own kingdom remains 
a kingdom of patience and of subjection. His 
word, one of separation, sharper than that of 
any two-edged sword, and the Christian life, 
one in which there is ever a foreseen death, 

* 1 Cor. xv. 24. 



TWO FRIENDS. 161 

the sacrifice of the human will, c even the death 
of the cross.' " 

44 And are you," said Philip, "led to believe 
that this separation will go on through the 
whole of the present dispensation, becoming 
ever more and more definite ? The final vic- 
tory of good is the one great certainty of the 
believing heart; and our natural feelings lead 
us to expect that this victory will be gradual 
and progressive ; an expectation, however, 
which is not confirmed by prophecy, which 
leads us rather to contemplate the two king- 
doms of good and evil, each increasing, 
strengthening themselves against each other 
before a great concluding struggle, out of 
which good will rise triumphant and jubilant ? 
A friend has asked me, ' Will not good and 
evil, before this final shock, draw more widely 
apart, and become compact ? Good, through 
the building up of Christ's body, and the closer 
mutual adhesion of his scattered members ; 
Evil, also standing up incarnate in the person 
of Antichrist ? ' " 

" There is surely," I said, " something of 



162 TWO FRIENDS. 

this gradual separation revealed in the deep- 
ened moral consciousness of the days we live 
in. Our eyes seem opened to discern between 
good and evil ; those who now prefer the lat- 
ter, do so knowingly and consciously. We can 
hardly, as even worthy people were wont to be 
in the generation which is passing from us, be 
amused with books and representations which 
draw their zest from the exhibition of sin and 
folly. We feel that there is in these things 
the nature and the power of death ; and the 
spirit of levity, even though it occupy a large 
space in our literature, seems foreign to it, and 
not to belong to our present order. Even the 
intellect of our day revolts from the shallow 
systems that are now afloat, — afloat truly, and 
drifting on the surface of the age, for they have 
no root within its heart and life, such, I mean, 
as tend to minimize the strength and depth and 
vitality of sin. Whether they choose to repre- 
sent it as a lower undeveloped form of good, a 
thing transmutable, with no essence of its own, 
or as being merely the want of balance and 
proportion, a question of too much or too little 



TWO FRIENDS. 163 

in the poising of man's nature, only needing 
readjustment, they have but one practical 
effect, and that is, to eat the heart out of our 
whole spiritual life ; to make even the life of 
Christ, the truest life that has ever lived, to 
make even his dying, a sort of drama. If there 
is no reality in sin, what becomes of the deep 
reality of sacrifice ? To what need was this 
great cost? 

" And what is there in Scripture which fa- 
vors the idea of any gradual absorption of evil ? 
Isaiah, a book stored with evangelic comfort, 
concludes with a denunciation on this point, 
the awfulness of which cannot be surpassed by 
human language ; and is there not something 
deeply significant in a fact which the so-called 
adherents of ' Jesus, not Paul,' would do well 
to consider, that it is from our Lord's own lips 
(and this, I think, without a solitary exception) 
that the severest warnings of future judgment 
fall. He it is, and not any one apostle, who 
speaks of the fire unquenchable, the worm that 
never dies ; he who describes, under many si- 
militudes, the final separation between the good 



164 TWO FRIENDS. 

and evil, and the utter rejection of the latter. 
Good and evil are antagonistic independent 
powers, separate from the beginning, separate 
even unto the end. What communion hath 
Christ with Belial ? what fellowship hath light 
with darkness ? Milton has taught us to look 
upon the Devil as a fallen angel, a being origi- 
nally good ; yet we are told by St. John, and 
by One greater than he, that he was a liar and 
a murderer from the beginning. This is a sub- 
ject which surely does not invite to a vague 
sentimentalism. Who can trace the history of 
the past? who can read the history of the pres- 
ent ? who, in other words, can take up a news- 
paper and refuse to believe in the existence of 
a dark kingdom of fraud, and cruelty, and un- 
speakable iniquity underlying the superficial 
prosperity of our daily life ; a kingdom that 
draws its strength and allurement from a spir- 
itual source, a kingdom that hath foundations, — 
foundations which are being continually more 
and more laid bare by the Light which shall at 
last triumph over them, as completely as the 
glory of the sunshine now fills every nook and 



TWO FRIENDS. 165 

crevice of some giant ruin that once resounded 
to the shout of 'Ave Ocesar, morituri te salw- 
tanV " 

"■A cry," said Philip, "which, translated 
into a purer language, has now become the 
watchword of the soldier and servant of Christ. 
It seems to me that in no other age of the 
world has the attraction of the Cross been so 
deeply felt as it is in this, — perhaps because it 
has been never so much needed as it is now to 
explain the dark parables of nature ; the griev- 
ous contradictions of life. It is certain that the 
primitive Church, though it lived beneath its 
shadow, clasped it less closely to the heart than 
we do. Simplicity and cheerfulness are the 
leading characteristics of the pictures in the 
Catacombs. It is remarkable that the Cross 
does not appear in them, nor any figure that 
tends to show a strong consciousness of sin, 
and the corresponding sense of alienation from 
God. Here we have Christ, the King, the 
good Shepherd, ever with his book, in the midst 
of his faithful ones in earth and heaven, be- 
tween which two places there is no division 



166 TWO FRIENDS. 

apparent except that of Jordan, — for so is 
death represented, — a slender, easily-crossed 
stream, the opposite banks distinguishable by 
the thorns and snares on one side, and the 
ever-blooming flowers on the other. The two 
pervading, continually recurring ideas are those 
of the guardianship of Christ, c Ego sum pastor 
bonusj and of the Resurrection, brought out 
over and again under the favorite type of 
Jonah. This infant, blood-baptized Church, 
deeply suffering, was not, it seems, so deeply 
sorrowing as ours ; it did not know our in- 
tellectual sadness, our doubts, our weariness, 
our worldliness, our strifes among brethren.' 
The star Wormwood had not then fallen, 
making all the waters of the earth bitter." 

"And yet," I said, "were they to become 
exceeding bitter, so that no man could drink 
them, the Lord hath showed us a Tree" 

" Beneath thy Cross I stand, 

Jesus, my Saviour, turn and look on me ! 
0, who are these that, one on either hand, 
Are crucified with thee ? 

" The one that turns away 

With sullen, scoffing lip, and one whose eyes 



TWO FRIENDS. 167 

Close o'er the words, * Yet shalt thou be this day 
With me in Paradise.' 

" Here would I fain behold 

This twofold mystery, Love's battle won, 
Its warfare ended, and its ransom told, 
Its conquest but begun ! 

" I say not to thee now, 

Come from the Cross and then will I believe; 
0, lift me up to thee, and teach me how 
To love and how to grieve. 

"I tracked thy footsteps long; 

For where thou wert, there would thy servant be ; 
But now, methought the silence, now the throng, 
Would part me still from thee. 

"I sought thee 'mid the leaves, 

I found thee on the dry and blasted tree; 
I saw thee not until I saw the thieves 
There crucified with thee ! " 




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